The folks at Red State posted this morning regarding a Supreme Court case that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, and it should. AT&T dutifully turned over reams of proprietary information to the FCC, which, in turn, decided that this information was suddenly in the public domain and even AT&T’s competitors could obtain it via Freedom of Information requests:
Once this information was in the FCC’s hands, a trade association called CompTel — comprised of AT&T’s competitors — filed a FOIA request for all the hitherto-proprietary AT&T info in the FCC’s possession. This abuse of the intent of FOIA, which was meant to promote open government rather than corporate intelligence gathering, was — to the surprise of many observers — validated by the FCC in late 2008, when it ruled that corporations are not protected by FOIA’s privacy exemptions. Just over one year later, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the FCC (PDF) in a defense of FOIA’s plain intent.
The question is, why, after courts have already shown the FCC what a boneheaded play this was, are they continuing to appeal? Are their egos and their self-worth that much wrapped up in having their mistake validated? If the federal government’s over-reaching commissions ever want any cooperation from the private sector, a little common sense needs to leaven their nanny-state impulses.
