New York Times Seeks Court Help on FCC Records of Possible Russian Net Neutrality Role
New York Times Co. asked a court to order the FCC to release documents that "will shed light on the extent to which" Russian government agents and nationals "interfered" with the notice-and-comment process for the agency's 2017 decision to "abandon"…
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net neutrality regulation. "Despite the clear public importance of the requested records, the FCC has thrown up a series of roadblocks, preventing The Times from obtaining the documents" under a Freedom of Information Act request, said a complaint Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in case No. 1:18-cv-08607. The Times said it repeatedly narrowed its FOIA request in the hopes of expediting release of the records. The FCC has responded "with protestations" it lacked "technical capacity," invoked "shifting rationales for rejecting" requests and misapplied a FOIA privacy exemption "to duck the agency's responsibility," the publisher said. The FCC is "disappointed that the New York Times has filed suit to collect the Commission’s internal web server logs, logs whose disclosure would put at jeopardy the Commission’s IT security practices for its Electronic Comment Filing System," emailed a spokesperson. "Just last week the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that the FCC need not turn over these same web server logs under the Freedom of Information Act.”