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Galraedia

(5,027 posts)
Fri Apr 6, 2018, 10:02 PM Apr 2018

Ajit Pai's FCC Doesn't Want You to Know About the Secret Deliberations

Remember that "monumentally unfunny" video of FCC chair Ajit Pai doing the Harlem Shake while wearing a Santa outfit and waving a lightsaber, which was imposed upon the world just 24 hours before his agency voted to gut net neutrality?

Apparently, the FCC doesn't want the public to know anything about its secretive deliberations with the right-wing Daily Caller that brought this "comedy" sketch into existence.

Faced with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the non-profit investigative group MuckRock—which asked for the communications between the Daily Caller and the FCC—the Republican-controlled agency this week invoked the so-called b5 exemption, which one analyst described as "an excuse used by government regulators to avoid releasing public documents."

"The very basic fact that they're unwilling to even disclose whether anybody had objections to this internally, or if they were all aboard, is the larger problem," said J. Pat Brown, the executive editor of Muckrock, which is appealing the FOIA denial and reportedly contemplating filing a lawsuit against the FCC. "You are entitled answers out of your government."

Read more: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/06/ajit-pais-fcc-doesnt-want-you-know-about-secret-deliberations-led-worst-video

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