State and Federal Governents Clash on NSA Snooping

An anonymous reader writes "In what could set the stage for an indirect decision over the NSA domestic surveillance program, The Justice Department has threatened the state of Maine with a lawsuit should the state's Public Utilities Commission investigate complaints from Maine customers that Verizon, by cooperating with the NSA without their customers' consent, violated privacy laws. Maine's PUC is expected to make its decision today.

(More from the article below.) From the linked article: "Verizon may have broken the law, and the Department of Justice is overstepping its bounds in trying to intimidate the state PUC from investigating the potential violation," said Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. "And I do think it sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent for the federal government to threaten to sue the state, (which is) merely doing its job."
The Maine complaint, filed in May by 22 Verizon customers, is one of several similar cases around the country. The cases were sparked by news reports alleging that phone companies have cooperated with government surveillance efforts by providing the domestic phone call records of millions of Americans.
In Vermont, where state officials are considering whether to open an investigation of Verizon and AT&T, the Justice Department has come down against the idea. The department has filed lawsuits to prevent the disclosure of information in New Jersey and Missouri."

Comments

Re:how dare

[budgenator]

It's not the Feds that Maine is investigating it's Verizon, the problem is Maine doesn't care about National Security becuase it's the a federal juridiction not state, the same as the feds don't care about the state laws of Maine. Verizons only has two hopes, first is that the state backs down becuase of the feds, and failing that Verizon closes ranks and just says "I plead the 5th admendment" no matter what they are asked and pray that the investigation stalls due to lack of evidence.

Can the PUC pull Verizon's charter for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question that I have is this: if the Public Utilities Comission asks Verizon point-blank: "did you do this?" and Verizon says "we won't tell you if we did or not," does that response constitute grounds for the Public Utilities Commission to revoke Verizon's charter in Maine?

That is to say, quite aside from the question of whether or not Verizon is guilty of wrongdoing in the matter of the wiretapping, it seems reasonable that a refusal to cooperate with the Public Utilities Commission investigation would itself be grounds for the commission to rescind Verizon's monopoly privilege in the state.

Re:Oh how things change

[jafac]

I dare say that many/most of those who own big businesses like the mass media want fascism and are doing what they can to make it happen, because it promises to give them greater power than what they have right now

Ironically, this is precisely what we were warned about in the 1980's when Regan did away with the FCC's "fairness doctrine" and began to erode media ownership rules so that media outlets could be consolidated into fewer and fewer large players.

Very funny - that everything that has come to pass (including 9/11, if you think about it, or if you had read PNAC's website prior to 2001) was pretty much foretold - and discredited as "liberal whining".