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FCC Refuses To Release Text of More Than 40,000 Net Neutrality Complaints (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission has denied a request to extend the deadline for filing public comments on its plan to overturn net neutrality rules, and the FCC is refusing to release the text of more than 40,000 net neutrality complaints that it has received since June 2015. The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request in May of this year for tens of thousands of net neutrality complaints that Internet users filed against their ISPs. The NHMC argues that the details of these complaints are crucial for analyzing FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to overturn net neutrality rules. The coalition also asked the FCC to extend the initial comment deadline until 60 days after the commission fully complies with the FoIA request. A deadline extension would have given people more time to file public comments on the plan to eliminate net neutrality rules. Instead, the FCC yesterday denied the motion for an extension and said that it will only provide the text for a fraction of the complaints, because providing them all would be too burdensome.
Yeah, I'd love for that to get brought up in court.
Judge: "How are the comments stored?"
FCC: "Digitally in a database system fed by an online submission website"
Judge: "What part of rertrieveing comments from this system is burdensome?"
FCC: "We've only got one computer than can access it."
Judge: "How is that a burden?"
FCC "It's in the basement, in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door that says beware of the leopard." "And it runs Windows 98"