The FCC (Federal Communications Commission), in the United States, has refused to release the 47,000 new neutrality complaints that it has received since June, 2015. This is after the NHMC (National Hispanic Media Coalition) filed a FoIA (Freedom of Information Act) to request the complaints because they claim that seeing the feedback of impacted customers is necessary to understand the impact behind the FCC's decision.
Furthermore, the NHMC argues that the details of these complaints are necessary in their analysis of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to overturn the net neutrality rules. It should also be noted that Ajit Pai has had long insisted anti-competitive behavior and has publicly claimed that net neutrality violations "aren't real." The NHMC has also asked the FCC to extend the comment deadline for 60 days after the commission fully complies with the FoIA request, as a deadline extension would give people more time to file public comments regarding net neutrality.
However, the FCC completely denied the motion for an extension and has publicly stated that it will only provide the requested text for some of the complaints, because providing all of them would be too difficult and "burdensome." Now, if you don't think that's ridiculous, you have to keep in mind that these people are proposing to completely break the internet as we know it and yet, they can't be bothered to comply with even the simplest of requests. Furthermore, it seems strange that they would deny to provide all of the comments, especially since the NHMC firmly believes that the text of all the comments is necessary to prove that Ajit Pai is basically blowing hot air.
The NHMC has responded by stating that the FCC, "must produce the approximately 47,000 open Internet complains that it has received [since June 2015] and documents related to the open Internet ombudsperson's interactions with Internet users. The Commission has already failed to meet the FoIA deadline, and FCC FoIA officers have offered several inconsistent timelines for document production, ranging from six months to two years."
On the other hand, the FCC states that it has done more than enough to comply with the FoIA request from the NHMC. An FCC official, Daniel Kahn, wrote: " We note that Commission staff could have denied NHMC's FOIA request on its face as unreasonably burdensome under the FOIA. In order to release all 47,000 complaints to NHMC, Commission staff would have had to review and redact personally identifiable information from each one of those complaints, which would have been unreasonably burdensome. Rather than simply denying the FOIA request, however, the staff has worked diligently with NHMC to provide it with responsive information in a reasonable time frame, while still protecting the personally identifiable information of thousands of consumers. On June 20, 2017, Commission FOIA staff provided NHMC with approximately 1,000 responsive complaints. Consistent with an oral offer on July 5, 2017, staff made a written offer on July 14, 2017 to provide NHMC by September 1, 2017 an additional 2,000 complaints, the accompanying carrier responses, 1,500 related emails, and an Excel spreadsheet of all 47,000 complaint numbers and additional requested data fields."
The NHMC wasn't happy with the FCC's decision and, as reported by Ars Technica, replied by stating: " The FCC's denial of our motion is shortsighted, denies the public critical information, and flies in the face of their acknowledgment that they have received over 47,000 open Internet complaints since the 2015 net neutrality rules were enacted. It should give the public pause that the agency with exclusive control over regulating Internet service providers refuses to share such information with the public. The information is within the FCC’s exclusive control and was completely ignored in the NPRM." (NHMC Special Policy Advisor Gloria Tristani)
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