There are no “private” individuals who commented. These are public comments. As in, they are on the public record. A full name and address was required in order to submit a comment. There is no privacy or anonymity when you’re commenting on the public record.

The NYT of any other organization can pull the filing and see each and every name and address associated with a comment. No combing or linking back to IDs needed. It’s all there for the entire world the see as part of the public record. The information that will be exposed by this ruling is the IP address(es) of whoever fraudulently commented using other people’s names and addresses.