The future is here and its most promising democratic tool is a free and open Internet. The problem is, telecoms and internet providers can make only so much before they feel like their huge pile of money isn’t as big a pile of money anymore. This means they want the already rigged games of monopoly and duopoly control to extend to new “revenue streams,” which means they want to figure out ways to take advantage of our growing economic disparities by creating a digital caste system.
Ajit Pai is a former Verizon crony who now moonlights as the chairman of the FCC—and he knows that he gets special treats if his master is happy with how he dances. This means his number one job is to end the Net Neutrality rules put in under the previous chairman Tom Wheeler. To this end, he has refused to acknowledge the validity of the American people’s opinions on the matter and is trying everything in his power to hide the dirty dealings of the people he represents in the big telecom world.
Arstechnica has a heartwarming story from the group American Oversight. They want the public to see what’s happening with our tax dollars.
On April 26, a nonprofit called American Oversight filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request asking the FCC for all records related to communications on net neutrality between Internet service providers and Chairman Ajit Pai or Pai's staff. The group asked for "correspondence, e-mails, telephone call logs, calendar entries, meeting agendas," and any other records of such communications.
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“The FCC has made it clear that they’re ignoring feedback from the general public, so we’re going to court to find out who they’re actually listening to about net neutrality," American Oversight Executive Director Austin Evers said in the group's announcement of its lawsuit. "If the Trump administration is going to let industry lobbyists rewrite the rules of the Internet for millions of Americans, we’re going to make them do it in full view of the public." (Evers was previously a US State Department lawyer.)
The FCC, not unlike our current Republican Congress, has no interest in allowing the American people access to what they have in store for Americans.
The FoIA law requires an agency to inform a records requester of the agency's decision to grant or deny access to requested records within 20 business days and to release the records shortly after that.
The FCC repeatedly requested extensions after getting the FoIA request from American Oversight, the group's complaint says. The nonprofit agreed to the first two extension requests, giving the FCC until July 24 to respond. The FCC asked for another one-month extension on July 21, but American Oversight refused to agree to a third extension.
We’ve already seen how Gizmodo’s FOIA request went, with the FCC dragging its heels until finally releasing nothing—as if Gizmodo had requested all of the visitors to Area 51 for the last 70 years.
Brendan Fischer, an associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told Gizmodo: “The FCC has repeatedly failed to enforce the law and regulations requiring transparency for political advertisements, so it is perhaps not surprising that the agency is also evading transparency by dodging FOIA requests.”
Everybody knows our entire government is running a scam.