President Trump's FCC Is About to Destroy Net Neutrality, and Commissioner Rosenworcel Is Calling Foul

Network neutrality is on its deathbed, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, appointed by President Donald Trump, is about to pull the plug. But not everyone on the FCC is gunning to undo the hard-won net neutrality protections. The FCC started soliciting comments from the public on Chairman Pai’s proposal to end network neutrality in May. More than 22 million comments came in, but there have been so many serious irregularities with the process that FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel thinks the FCC needs to slam on the brakes. “I’ve got concerns,” said Commissioner Rosenworcel, who also served on FCC under President Barack Obama and originally voted to instate the open internet order in 2015. “There were some procedural problems with the way this all came together.” For instance, she said, there have been allegations that most of the comments came from bots, or some even from dead people. Most of those fraudulent comments were suspiciously against net neutrality, while data analysts found the overwhelming majority of organic comments to be in favor of the internet regulations. 

Commissioner Rosenworcel says that before a vote takes place, the FCC needs to hold a series open hearings across the country to ensure that Americans gets a fair shot at weighing in on Chairman Pai’s proposal. “I think it’s important for the agency to get out from behind its computers and actually meet with the public on these matters face to face,” Rosenworcel said, because the consequence of killing the open internet protections could be extreme. “If you want to make changes this big that affect every person in this country who accesses the internet, we shouldn’t be shy about reaching out to Americans and asking them what they think about these policies. Rushing them through with a bureaucratic process and at a speed so that they occur before anyone knows what happens is just at odds with basic transparency.”