Domestic Surveillance-Verizon

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock held Thursday that the "potential risk" to national security is significant enough to grant a Justice Department motion to keep the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) from forcing Verizon to reveal whether it has cooperated with the National Security Agency’s (NSA) warrantless wiretap program. ^[1]

We have written extensively about the wiretap program here and domestic surveillance programs here.

"It is painfully obvious that, in making assessments about the impact of its order on national security, the PUC is acting beyond its depth," Woodcock wrote. ^[2]

"The PUC’s statutory area of responsibility and expertise is to regulate public utilities, it is not charged with evaluating threats to national security, investigating the NSA, or holding businesses in contempt when their silence was mandated by the federal government.”^[3]

"When confronted with a divergence of opinion as to the national security implications of the PUC order, as between the NSA, which is charged with ensuring national security, and the PUC, which is charged with state utility regulation, the court would be hard-pressed to rely on the assurances of the PUC over the warnings of the NSA," he said.^[4]

In May, a multicustomer complaint was filed with the PUC after news reports about domestic surveillance by the NSA came out, seeking to force Verizon to say whether it provided telephone call records to the government without warrants.^[5]

Similar lawsuits were filed in federal courts in Missouri, Connecticut and New Jersey and those lawsuits are being combined and sent to U.S. District Court in San Francisco under the federal court’s multidistrict litigation program. ^[6]

Verizon moved to dismiss the complaint and attached two press releases it had issued to the motion stating that the company could not comment on whether it had any relationship to the NSA program, but also said it had not shared records with the agency.^[7] Last summer, the PUC asked Verizon to submit sworn affirmations about the truth of the statements in the press releases.^[8]

The Justice Department in August sued the PUC and Verizon seeking an injunction and declaratory judgment to keep commissioners from asking questions about what phone records the company has turned over to NSA, if any, and to keep Verizon from answering questions from the PUC. ^[9]

The executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, which represented the Verizon customers who brought the complaint to the PUC, disagreed with Woodcock’s ruling.^[10]

"We don’t think it’s a national secret that the federal government and many phone companies conspired to conduct surveillance of phone customers in the U.S. and very possibly Maine," Shenna Bellows said. "It’s hard to believe that confirmation under oath about statements made widely in the press would violate state secrets." ^[11]

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[1] Judy Harrison, Judge Scuttles Verizon Hearing, Bangor Daily News, February 9, 2007.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.