Judge: FCC can’t hide records that may explain net neutrality comment fraud

The Federal Communications Commission must stop withholding records that may shed light on fraudulent comments submitted in the FCC's network neutrality repeal proceeding, a US District Court judge ruled the week of Sept 10. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in Sept 2017 by freelance journalist Jason Prechtel, who sued the FCC after it failed to provide documents in response to his Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request. Prechtel sought data that would identify people who made bulk comment uploads; many of the uploads contained fraudulent comments submitted in other people's names without their knowledge. Prechtel called the ruling "a huge victory for transparency over an issue that has gone unanswered by the FCC and its current leadership for too long."

Making the documents public will allow scrutiny of the FCC's process for taking comments on the net neutrality repeal, said the ruling written by Judge Christopher Cooper of US District Court for the District of Columbia. "In addition to enabling scrutiny of how the Commission handled dubious comments during the rulemaking, disclosure would illuminate the Commission's forward-looking efforts to prevent fraud in future processes," Judge Cooper wrote. Disclosure "would clarify the extent to which the Commission succeeded—as it assured the American people it had—in managing a public-commenting process seemingly corrupted by dubious comments." While Cooper didn't give Prechtel everything he asked for, the judge's ruling ordered the FCC to turn over the email addresses used to submit .CSV files that were used to submit comments in bulk. Judge Cooper also ordered the FCC to work with Prechtel on potentially releasing the .CSV files themselves.