Reps McNerney and Dingell Blast Chairman Pai for Failure to Follow Through on Commitments

Reps Jerry McNerney (D-CA) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI) sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai expressing their strong disappointment that the Chairman has failed to provide repeatedly requested documentation related to the alleged May 7 distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System. 

During the time of these alleged attacks, the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System experienced an outage, and the public was unable to file comments on the Chairman’s proposal to roll back net neutrality protections. In the letter, Reps McNerney and Dingell urge Chairman Pai to follow through on his commitments before holding a vote on his proposal to eliminate net neutrality protections. At the two FCC oversight hearings that were held in 2017 before the House Communications Subcommittee, Chairman Pai assured Reps McNerney and Dingell that he would produce documentation related to the alleged attacks. After not receiving the requested documentation, the members asked the Chairman about this information in a question for the record. To date, no response has been received. 

“Given your high regard for transparency, we would expect that you would have disclosed to us by now the requested documents or an explanation of technical or legal prohibitions for your refusal to do so,” Reps. McNerney and Dingell wrote in the letter. “…Transparency is important, even when it’s not convenient. We expect you to live up to your commitment to transparency. Many unanswered questions remain about the motive behind the alleged attacks, the response of the FCC, and whether the outage had a major impact on the ability of the American people to comment on the proceeding to eliminate net neutrality protections.” Reps McNerney and Dingell continued. “The Commission should be transparent about any potential issues with the factual record on a proceeding of this magnitude, and should not move forward with a vote until the American people know what happened,” Reps McNerney and Dingell concluded.