New York Times Not Entitled To Information About Net Neutrality Commenters, FCC Says

The Federal Communications Commission is asking a judge to reject The New York Times Company's request for information about comments submitted to the agency in its 2017 net neutrality proceeding. The agency argues that the data sought by the Times -- including IP addresses associated with comments -- would compromise commenters' privacy. The FCC also says it can't provide the information sought by the news company without undertaking new research. In Sept 2018, the Times filed a lawsuit investigating possible Russian meddling in a proceeding that resulted in the repeal of the Obama-era net neutrality rules. 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. The newspaper argues that it's entitled to the information under the Freedom of Information Act. The FCC says it's entitled to summary judgment on the grounds that the information is exempt from FOIA laws, arguing that the agency's comment system isn't configured to provide that kind of data.