Passing Another Marker On The Road To Authoritarianism

We all know the Trump administration is going to be attacking the idea of net neutrality and catering to its overlords in the communications industry. And new FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai is wasting no time getting started.

His first acts as commissioner have been to cease providing high speed internet service at a discount to low-income households, withdrawing support to keep prison phone rates down, and abandoning the effort to free users from the cable set-top box, allowing cable shows to be delivered through AppleTV or Roku as some channels allow now.

All of this was to be expected from the Trump administration. What was probably not expected was the way these decisions were executed and delivered.  Most of these decisions were made in secret and were “announced” by burying them deep in the weeds of the FCC website. According to the Times article, “Mr. Pai released about a dozen actions in the last week, many buried in the agency’s website and not publicly announced, stunning consumer advocacy groups and telecom analysts”.

This seems to be a clear pattern for the Trump administration as data is being deliberately withheld from the public. From the removal of climate change data to the elimination of USDA reports on puppy mills, the Trump administration seems to feel the less the public knows, the better. Restricting information from the public and decisions made in secret without any real public notification are just more examples of the creeping authoritarianism the country is facing under Trump.