Open government

On November 22, 2017, you [Jarrod Sharp] appealed the denial of your application for a fee waiver in connection with your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, FOIA Control No. 2018-067. By this letter, we dismiss your appeal. On October 26, 2017, you filed a FOIA request with the Commission, seeking 1) a copy of the “‘Restoring Internet Freedom’ plan,” 2) documents regarding the Commission’s release of the plan, and 3) documents discussing the Commission’s DDOS attack claims. This request was assigned FOIA Control No. 2018-067.

What, if anything, is constraining the Trump Justice Department in its dangerous war on leakers, whistleblowers, and journalists? The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Freedom of the Press Foundation are teaming up to find out.

My fellow FCC Commissioners would benefit from hosting their own public forums and listening to the concerns raised by consumers and small businesses. Doing so would allow them to hear first-hand on what it means to access the internet without fear that their broadband provider will slow down or block their favorite online applications and services. My colleagues would benefit from hearing concerns about broadband providers’ poor service, surprise price hikes, and inadequate customer support, so, why won’t they?

Network neutrality regulations underpin the digital lives of many Americans, yet it is challenging to survey the public on such an inherently complex and technical subject. For this reason, Pew Research Center set out to analyze the opinions of those who had taken the time to submit their thoughts to the Federal Communications Commission.  Among the most notable findings:

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission is expected to release its draft Network Neutrality Order on Wednesday, November 22—just before Thanksgiving. This timing has created an uproar among some opponents of the Order, who claim that the timing is merely part of what is admittedly an unfortunately common strategy among governments to release unpopular news when it thinks the public is least likely to see it. In this case, however, the claim has several problems.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition filed an Application for Review (AFR) to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC), Office of the General Counsel (OGC) seeking review of the letter dated September 14, 2017 stating that the FCC was producing its “final production of documents” in response to NHMC’s FOIA requests filed in early May 2017.

A new era of cutting-age technology begins Nov 13 at the United States Supreme Court, as the public for the first time will be able to access briefs and other case documents on the court’s website. Unimpressed? Perhaps the reader, in the waning second decade of the 21st century, thinks such an innovation might have been implemented, say, many years ago, as it was for the rest of the federal courts. “The courts will often choose to be late to the harvest of American ingenuity,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote when announcing the online project at the end of 2014.

In so many ways, the underlying conditions of US democracy need repair. Among American citizens, ideological and philosophical divisions seem insurmountably sharp; among their representatives in Washington, compromise appears impossible. Whatever side you were on in last year’s election, it’s clear that the campaign brought these problems dramatically to the surface of our national life; it’s also clear that these challenges would have been with us, in equal measure, no matter who won. And so, as we approach the one-year anniversary of the election, we asked dozens of writers and artists to look beyond the day-to-day upheavals of the news cycle and propose one idea that could help fix the long-term problems bedeviling American democracy. The result: 38 conservative, liberal, practical, creative, broad, specific, technocratic, provocative solutions for an unsettled country.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has officially declared an end to the pilot project of publishing the text of meeting items three weeks before they are voted, but only to declare it his policy going forward. That came at a press conference following the FCC's public meeting Oct 24.

The chairman early on instituted the test as part of his transparency agenda. Asked at the meeting about the status of the test, he first said it had been a success and making it permanent was certainly something he was willing to discuss with his colleagues and "working with the commission staff to determine the feasibility and benefits of doing so. But after a pause, he continued: "In fact, you know what, let's just go ahead and declare the pilot over. It is not the official policy of the FCC to release these at least three weeks in advance of the monthly meeting." As leader of the loyal opposition under former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Ajit Pai was a frequent critic of FCC process, saying it lacked transparency—he has long argued for letting the public know what is being voted on at public meetings—and said it was the kind of regulatory certainty that a competitive marketplace needs.

In a first for the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, oral argument in a major abortion case, Garza vs. Hargan Oct. 20 will be live streamed after Fix the Court, which advocates for greater access to federal courts, made the request. Chief Judge Merrick Garland issued the decision in a one-sentence letter to Fix the Court executive director Gabe Roth, saying simply: "Thank you for your letter of today's date, requesting that the court provide a live audio feed of arguments  in Garza v. Hargan, 17-5236, tomorrow.