Judge orders FCC to share net neutrality repeal comment records

The New York Times has won its lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission, as a federal judge ruled Thursday that the FCC must turn over net neutrality comment records that it refused to give to the NYT.

The New York Times sued the FCC in 2018 demanding that the agency release data logs that could shed light on who was behind the fake comments. The newspaper filed the lawsuit after the FCC refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the records on the grounds that revealing IP addresses from the fake comments would be an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai acknowledged in late 2018 that roughly 500,000 comments submitted during the debate over the controversial repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules were fraudulent and linked to Russian email addresses.

For over a year, the FCC claimed to have proof that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were behind the comment system issues. In August 2018, however, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai finally admitted that wasn't true. After an inspector general report found no evidence of an attack, Pai sought to pin the blame on his staff—and, for some reason, former President Barack Obama.

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