Judge rules FCC to pay $43,000 for hiding comment records in net neutrality investigation
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It took some time and a few lawsuits, but the fraud that the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission attempted to perpetrate on the American consumer by creating a ton of misleading information and outright lies in the public comments on FCC ChairmaJudge rules FCC to pay $43,000 for hiding comment records in net neutrality investigation
It took some time and a few lawsuits, but the fraud that the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission attempted to perpetrate on the American consumer by creating a ton of misleading information and outright lies in the public comments on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s net neutrality rollback has come to light. Much of that heavy lifting was done by tech website Gizmodo in a piece co-authored by Dell Cameron and Jason Prechtel. On March 21, Prechtel was awarded $43,077.80, to be paid by the FCC, in a settlement over requests under the Freedom of Information Act that the journalist made while researching his story. Pretchel was unable to get the FCC to comply with his FOIA requests, but he was able to obtain the information through another agency. The FCC has settled the case after two years of sitting on Prechtel’s FOIA requests. Of course, the cat was out of the bag at this point, but as Gizmodo explains, the judge in the case did not let the FCC off lightly. The amount recouped by Loevy & Loevy is far above average, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research center at Syracuse University. For every 50 or so plaintiffs awarded less than $10,000, only about five are awarded fees ranging from $50,000 to $75,000. The fees, awarded at judges’ discretion, are not routine, TRAC says. The fact of the matter is that not only did the FCC lie about the comments themselves—saying that the pro-net neutrality comments were bot-driven—but they attributed them far afield of the probable real perpetrators of the comment fraud. The newly elected Democratic House majority has already announced an easy-to-understand and popularly supported bill that would reinstitute the consumer protections that telecom shill Pai yanked away. Read more