The New York Times Sues FCC For Net Neutrality Records (bna.com)
The New York Times Company on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) concerning records the newspaper alleges may shed light on possible Russian participation in a public comment period before the commission rolled back Obama-era net neutrality rules. Bloomberg reports: The plaintiffs, including Times reporter Nicholas Confessore and investigations editor Gabriel Dance, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Sept. 20 under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking to compel the commission to hand over data. "The request at issue in this litigation involves records that will shed light on the extent to which Russian nationals and agents of the Russian government have interfered with the agency notice-and-comment process about a topic of extensive public interest: the government's decision to abandon 'net neutrality,'" the plaintiffs alleged.
I'm starting to think Trump Derangement Syndrome has hit the media harder than we thought. I can't come up with any reason to suspect Russian involvement in this other than the generic anti-Trump "it's the Russians!" rhetoric we've been hearing since he won the election.
I've got no reason why the New York Times thinks Russia is involved in this. It makes no sense. There's at least a kernel of truth to the whole "Russia Facebook" thing (there's some evidence that Russian-backed groups posted meme images, that's the extent of it) but Russians involved in flooding the FCC with comments? Literally the first I've heard of it.
Because libs have lost their fucking minds.
I bet if Russia nuked us they would be smiling as they died. "I was right!" they happily cried, as the blast melted their faces off.
> They are suing to release the information. Why don't you want the information to be seen?
The information is meaningless because I understand how the public comment process works and the vast majority of commenters appear not to, having actually taken the time to participate in some before. Yes, that does mean I'm a US citizen. There's no voting going on here. It doesn't matter how many people show their support for any particular idea. It's a place to bring up new ideas, so we should be glad if we can get the benefits of diversity from hearing other perspectives we might not consider. They have always ignored the spam comments the same way everyone who gets spam does. So the only BS here is people trying to "prove" something that simply cannot be proven from the data you seek.
In short, it honestly doesn't matter to anyone but a few bigots as to who commented, only the ideas that were presented therein. You can have the info as far as I'm concerned, I really don't give a crap. It's just that it makes no possible difference who wrote them. Even if I assume it was Putin himself, or whatever nationality triggers your bigotry the most, it could not possibly make one iota of difference. For those familiar with legal terms, I'd say that you have failed to allege a claim upon which relief may be granted. In other words, the very premise of your argument, even if I assume it's 100% factually true or would be proven true by this data, is so wrong as to comical.