Russian attempts to meddle in net neutrality

When is a public comment not a public comment ? When it's not what the FCC wants you to hear, apparently, and possibly because it came from a Russian spambot.

The FCC denied the request, telling the Times on July 21, 2017 that the information may be withheld in full under the FoIA exemption for data containing personally identifiable information.The Times argued that the exemption doesn't apply to public comments and that, even if it did, "the FCC is obligated to redact or segregate exempt materials rather than withhold the records in full."

The FCC then raised new objections, saying "that the requested records would reveal sensitive information about the security measures in place to protect the FCC's notice-and-comment processes [and] that the request was overly burdensome," according to the Times' lawsuit.

In September 2017, the Times says it "agreed to narrow its request and eliminate certain header information in an effort to ensure that the security measures introduced by the agency would not be revealed."

In December, the FCC told the Times that this would not satisfy its security concerns, so the Times narrowed its request again. The new request "sought only the comment, the originating IP address, the date and time stamp, and the User-Agent header for comments submitted within the specified time frame," the Times said.

After another FCC refusal, the Times in May of this year "proposed that the agency produce across separate logs: (1) the originating IP addresses and timestamps, so that the agency's security measures would not be revealed; (2) User-Agent headers (which reveal information such as what Internet browser the individual was using) and timestamps; and (3) the comments, names, and timestamps submitted between the specified dates."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/did-russia-meddle-with-net-neutrality-comments-nyt-sues-fcc-to-find-out/