| THEY’RE NOT HAPPY WITH YOU: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is under
fire from free market advocates who suspect the commission is biased
towards progressive net neutrality activists. |
The chairman’s office and a prominent net neutrality activist at the center
of the debate insist frustrations the agency has been politicized are unfounded,
telling Watchdog.org the coordination was unbiased and meant to keep the peace
between all parties involved that day.
Fearing the commission’s outdated comment system would crash under another a
massive volume of submissions, as it did in July, pro-net neutrality advocates
planning to protest Sept. 10 reached out to the FCC to see how they could “help
keep the system afloat,” according to a story Sept. 26 in the Washington Post.
After the New Yorker reported — the day after the protest — an unofficial FCC
tally that the commission received more than 100,000 pro-net neutrality comments
from the public, the Post revealed advocates asked Wheeler’s press office to
“correct the record” and refer media inquiries to them.
They were “dismayed” that such a low number was made public after the FCC
advised them to withhold submissions to keep the system from crashing, according
to the Post.
Rather than post what amounted to a rolling tally of submissions, the FCC
decided to wait until several days later — after the close of the comment period
— to post the final number of public comments filed.
FCC chairman Tom Wheeler’s spokeswoman Kim Hart told Watchdog.org in a media
statement the “FCC IT team worked with multiple parties to ensure everyone was
able to successfully submit comments to the agency on the Open Internet
proceeding.”
“After receiving a surge of comments leading up to the reply comment deadline,
the IT team created a third option for filing bulk comments. This option was
made available to all interested parties at the same time via a blog post on our
website,” said Hart, referring to Watchdog.org to the blog post.
The Washington Post’s revelations troubled free-market groups, including
TechFreedom, American Commitment and FreedomWorks, which withheld their own
campaigns that day to protest net neutrality. Stating in a letter they sent to
Wheeler on Oct. 2, while FCC staff were “even-handed and helpful” with regard to
filing comments, they didn’t get the same kind of help from the agency with
media relations as their opponents, nor did they think it was appropriate for
the agency to do so for anyone unless done objectively.
The decade-long net neutrality debate is tense, multifaceted, nuanced and
complex. Major broadband providers and applications companies are locked in
legal and political combat alongside their ideological allies over whether the
FCC or the private sector has the final say over the pricing, speed and flow of
Internet traffic.
In the letter, the free-market groups accused the FCC of “engaging in the worst
aspects of partisan politics” whose efforts resulted in a “lopsided media
narrative” about popular support being in favor of regulating broadband services
like public utilities under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. While
pro-net neutrality activists said they got more than 700,000 comments that day
in favor of Title II, the free-market groups told the chairman they received
more than 900,000 comments opposing the move.
[to top of second column]
|
 The commission reported getting more than 3.7 million comments
from the public after the close of the comment period. When net
neutrality advocate Marvin Ammori alerted Hart via Twitter on the
protest day that he had privately messaged her, for example,
free-market activists saw a sign of possible improper contact with
the agency.
Ammori heads the Ammori Group, a D.C. and Silicon Valley-based
public policy law firm whose clients, according to the firm’s site,
“include or have included Google, Dropbox, Automattic, Tumblr, and
others.” After a presentation is made to the commission, a record of
the communication, or ex parte, must be filed to ensure
off-the-record communications don’t influence policies pending
before the commission.
On his website, Ammori says he’s not a lobbyist and he “almost
never” does anything “that could be considered lobbying.” He’s
careful to distance his personal views from his clients, it says.
Ammori sits on the boards of Fight for the Future, Demand Progress
and Engine Advocacy, and he’s former general counsel for the
progressive advocacy group Free Press.
In an interview with Watchdog.org, Ammori likened his message to
Hart to coordinating meeting times with a government official,
saying the message was neither “nefarious,” as the free-market
groups suggested, nor in “bad faith.”
“If an ex parte were required, I’d be happy to put it in, but it
sort of like belabors the point,” said Ammori, “and the FCC felt
like we were following their process.”
Ammori had been trying to keep the peace between the net neutrality
activists and the agency who were working to make sure the site did
not crash, a point highlighted in the Post’s report.
“I think that the FCC would have done that for either side to make
sure that the site didn’t go down and make sure that things got in,”
said Ammori.
But for free-market advocates, the Post’s story only confirmed
suspicions the FCC’s efforts were the latest in an authoritarian
“pattern” exhibited by Wheeler and his office. Wheeler’s staff
members have held previous positions at the FCC, and the State
Department, CTIA-The Wireless Association, various legal firms and
Google.
Diane Cornell, Wheeler’s special counsel, for example, was a vice
president at CTIA, a trade group for the wireless industry. Sagar
Doshi, Wheeler’s special assistant, previously worked at Google.
But as Watchdog.org reported, Wheeler’s office’s ties to pro-net
neutrality groups through his special counsel for external affairs,
Gigi Sohn, have not alleviated their concerns he’s working toward a
preconceived progressive agenda championed by the Obama
administration.
Ammori disagreed with their singling out of Sohn, telling
Watchdog.org Sohn had been a member of the public interest community
that got along well with industry and was unlikely to be compromised
by her work in government.
Contact Josh Peterson at jpeterson@watchdog.org. Follow Josh on
Twitter at @jdpeterson
[This
article courtesy of
Watchdog.]
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