UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA JASON PRECHTEL Plaintiff, v. Case No. 17-cv-01835 (CRC) FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION, et al. Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION In spring of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or “Commission”) promulgated a proposed rule to establish regulations for broadband internet service providers. Captioned “Restoring Internet Freedom,” the rulemaking sought to repeal prior regulations promoting “net neutrality”—the principle that internet service providers afford equal access to all internet-enabled data. The proposal received significant public attention, garnering an unprecedented twenty-four million public comments on the administrative record. The number of fraudulent, duplicative, or otherwise dubious comments was equally unprecedented. These questionable comments have drawn the attention of FCC Commissioners, Members of Congress, and journalists including Jason Prechtel, the plaintiff in this case. Prechtel filed Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests seeking details about the use of two electronic comment-submission tools that the FCC had enabled to facilitate public participation in the regulatory process: comma-separated value (“.CSV”) files and an Application Programming Interface (“API”). These tools allowed members of the public to comment on the proposal without going directly to the Commission’s website and accessing its comment 1 platform (or Electronic Comment Filing System (“ECFS”)). A .CSV file is a template provided by the FCC—essentially, a spreadsheet in which every row contains a separate comment—that allows an individual or organization to solicit and compile multiple comments and upload them into ECFS in one fell swoop. These submissions are sometimes referred to as “bulk comments.” By way of example, if an organization wanted its membership to submit comments supporting the FCC’s proposed actions, it might ordinarily be forced to encourage each member to access the ECFS website and submit an individual comment. The bulk comment submission process enabled the organization to collect its members’ comments, format them into the .CSV spreadsheet, and submit them all at once by transmitting that spreadsheet to ECFS. An API, in turn, is a mechanism that facilitates communication between ECFS and other websites. As relevant here, it allows website developers to place comment-submission tools on third-party websites, meaning that visitors to those websites can submit comments to ECFS directly from those websites. For example, if a group opposing the Commission’s proposed actions wanted visitors to its website to submit comments into the record, it might ordinarily include a link to ECFS, forcing a visitor to leave its website to submit a comment. The API instead enabled the group to place a comment form directly on its own website, allowing a visitor to type a comment and submit it into ECFS without leaving the site. Those seeking to host an API capable of communicating with ECFS must register for a “key,” which confirms to ECFS that the information being transmitted comes from a registered source—essentially, a unique code that opens the door to ECFS so a comment can be left inside. Prechtel filed two FOIA requests: one with the Commission and one with the General Services Administration (“GSA”), the executive agency that manages the ...
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