The Federal Communications Commission is being pressured to release the text of 47,000 net neutrality complaints before going through with Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to eliminate net neutrality rules.
The FCC has refused to release the text of most neutrality complaints despite a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request that asked for all complaints filed since June 2015. The FCC has provided 1,000 complaints to the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), which filed the public records request but said last month that it's too "burdensome" to redact personally identifiable information from all 47,000.
Today, 16 groups wrote a letter urging the FCC to release all the complaints so they can be reviewed by the public before the commission finalizes a plan to dismantle the 2015 net neutrality rules. "The FCC has failed to make critical evidence available for public review and comment," they wrote to Pai and the other four commissioners.
When contacted by Ars today, an FCC spokesperson said the commission will release the complaints "as soon as we can."
Chairman Pai's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) argues that a lack of formal net neutrality complaints may show that the rules aren't needed. But while there was only one formal complaint, against Verizon, tens of thousands of consumers used the less burdensome informal complaint process to complain about their ISPs.
Advocacy groups wrote in today's letter:
Consumers likely use the informal complaint mechanism to address harms caused by ISPs that violate the current bright-line Net Neutrality rules and transparency rules. Over 47,000 consumer complaints have been submitted against ISPs since June 2015, and carriers provided approximately 18,000 responses to those complaints, and there are 1,500 emails documenting interactions between the ombudsperson and Internet users. These numbers alone should give the Commission pause. However, only a full analysis of these consumer complaints and ombudsperson documents will allow the public to fully answer questions posed in the NPRM.
The letter was signed by 18MillionRising.org, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Center for Media Justice, the Center for Rural Strategies, Color of Change, Common Cause, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Native Public Media, New America’s Open Technology Institute, OpenMedia, Popular Resistance, Public Knowledge, and the United Church of Christ.
The pressure on the FCC seems to be having some effect.
"Pursuant to FOIA, the FCC must redact any personal information from the over 47,000 documents that have been requested before they can be released," a spokesperson for Pai told Ars today. "Currently, commission staffers are in the process of reviewing these documents and redacting any personal information. We anticipate releasing another batch of documents by the end of the week and will release the remainder as soon as we can."
Spreadsheets providing some details of the complaints that have been released so far are available at this link.
Complaints may show “evidence of harm”
Pai's NPRM asks the public if there is "evidence of actual harm to consumers sufficient to support maintaining the Title II telecommunications service classification of broadband Internet access service" and related net neutrality rules, the letter notes.
Yet the FCC is proposing to eliminate the rules and the commission's "open Internet ombudsperson" role "without looking at any of its own evidence," the groups wrote.
"The FCC has confirmed that there are approximately 1,500 e-mails documenting interactions between the ombudsperson and Internet users, and to date, has yet to release a single e-mail for public review and analysis," they wrote.
Between the 47,000 complaints and the ombudsperson's interactions with consumers, "[i]t is disturbing that the FCC has apparently failed to review documents that are in its exclusive possession prior to crafting an NPRM to repeal the very rules that established these enforceable mechanisms to redress consumer harms," they wrote.
The groups asked the FCC to release all the requested documents and extend the deadline for public comments on Pai's plan to overturn net neutrality rules. A deadline delay would give people time to review the complaints and submit analysis to the FCC.
The FCC last month offered to provide NHMC with an additional 2,000 complaints by September 1, but that's after the comment deadline.
Other advocacy groups also recently requested an eight-week comment deadline extension, but the FCC granted only a two-week extension. The comment deadline now stands at August 30.
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