New York Times Presses Bid For Data About Net Neutrality Comments

The New York Times Company is pressing a judge to order the Federal Communications Commission to turn over information about comments submitted in the 2017 net neutrality proceeding. “The logs will likely reveal the true extent of the fraud that infected the net neutrality rulemaking,” the newspaper argues in court papers filed April 10 with US District Court Judge Lorna Schofield in the Southern District of New York. “In the wake of Special Counsel’s Robert Mueller’s recent indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies for interfering with U.S. elections and the U.S. political system, the public interest in understanding how these cloud-based automated bots are being used to influence an array of U.S. political activities -- including the agency notice-and-comment process -- is exceptionally high.” The Times is seeking IP addresses, timestamps and user-agent headers — which could provide information about commenters' browsers — for all public comments regarding net neutrality submitted between April 26, 2017 and June 7, 2017.