Some ammo for patriots:
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Surveillance case: Feds and Verizon not above the law
Monday, August 07, 2006
Editorial:Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
First, Verizon told the state of Maine to get lost.
Now, the feds are telling us the same thing.
Can't a state get any respect around here?
Maine law says that telephone subscribers have a "right to privacy and the protection of this right is of paramount concern to the State." But earlier this year, reports emerged that telephone service provider Verizon might have collaborated with the federal government to review phone calls made by their customers in order to identify potential terrorist activity.
So a group of concerned citizens, helped by the Maine Civil Liberties Union, filed a complaint with the state's Public Utilities Commission, or PUC.
They asked the PUC to review whether Verizon had acted properly under state law. Similar actions were subsequently filed in numerous other states.
Verizon's response was to tell Maine that it wouldn't play ball: "Verizon is prohibited...from providing any information concerning its alleged cooperation with the National Security Agency."
The issue, wrote their attorneys, "cannot be litigated" without placing national security at risk.
And, it seems, it's not enough that one of the country's largest corporations was seeking to evade its legal responsibilities in Maine by using the argument that national security trumps all.
Now, it turns out, the federal government is trying to bully Maine into swallowing the same argument. In a July 28 letter to the PUC, the U.S. Department of Justice threatens to sue Maine if it undertakes an investigation of Verizon. "We sincerely hope that, in light of governing law and the national security concerns implicated by the requests for information, you will decline to open an investigation and close these proceedings, thereby avoiding litigation over the matter," they wrote.
They're sincere all right -- and threatening.
The federal government has similarly hounded other states that have said they want to investigate the issue; they've filed lawsuits in both New Jersey and Missouri to prevent the disclosure of information.
Mind you, this is the same government that rode into power on a platform of state's rights.
Furthermore, the feds have argued that any proceeding, if it goes forward, will force them to admit or deny the existence of a surveillance program, thus giving important information away to our enemies.
This is a ludicrous assertion, given that the program's existence has been covered in the worldwide media for months.
Forgive us if we feel that we're heading down the rabbit hole.
We are troubled by the specter of the federal government intervening, before a proceeding has even taken place, and attempting to interfere with a state's legitimate right to protect its citizens.
The PUC commissioners (there are currently only two, the third seat being vacant) will take up the issue today with this threat hanging over their heads.
Even if the federal government has a legitimate claim to national security in this regard, we believe it should have waited for the PUC proceeding to go forward, at which point the government could have either refused to answer questions on the grounds of national security risk or, preferably, worked out a way in which sensitive national security information could be dealt with in a secure context.
Trying to head off Maine's investigation is another way of claiming the federal government and its collaborators are above the law.
It's not as if this is the first proceeding in the country's history in which national security considerations are present.
Courts and agencies have for decades dealt with such questions by establishing rules under which sensitive information can be divulged and kept safe.
That is the proper way to proceed here and we hope that rather than resort to the bullying and evasion that have characterized its approach so far, the federal government will remember that we are a nation of laws that apply to everyone.
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Reader Comments
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David Manchester of Niantic, CT
Aug 7, 2006 6:13 PM
The Federal government and Verizon telling the State of Maine to go pound sand when it comes to the privacy of Customer recors has less to do with the war on radical Islamic terrorists, and more to do with an ongoing egregious power grab by a particularly virulent faction of the Republican Party.
In the 1970's when the Church Committee completed it's hearings on domestic surveillance abuses by the intelligence agencies and the FBI, and the Pike Committee investigations came to dissolution due to the leaking of their final report to the Village Voice, both Rumsfeld and Cheney began chafing at the bit.
When FISA was passed in 1978 both Cheney and Rumsfeld felt that the restrictions it placed on the President's ability to spy on citizens was an encroachment on the inherent powers of the executive branch under Article II of the Constitution. Current events show their continuing illegal and extra - Constitutional efforts to rectify these concerns.
Many of the documents related to warrantless NSA domestic wiretapping and domestic surveillance by our own military, such as lawsuits, CRS (Congressional Research Service) Reports, FOIA requests, and Congressional testimony are usually released in pdf file format. To view them, one must use Adobe Acrobat or the associated plugin for web browsers, which many nontechnical Users are unable to access, install, or use. Also, these documents are distributed online in obscure and widely scattered locations. Result: Many American Citizens are unable to witness, first hand, just how corrupt, deceitful, and duplicitous this current administration is, in it's power grab that seeks to subvert civil libeties instead of actually focusing meager resources going after the real terrorists.
In an effort to gain wider distribution for these important historical documents, I have put together a downloadable collection of these pdf files I have converted to navigable web page html files. Below is a document summary with links.
I hope Kennebec Journal and Maine Today Readers, and the State find them useful in their efforts to preserve our civil liberties and the privacy of our Customer records. I wish the State of Maine the best of luck in pursuing this case.
-David Manchester
kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com
WARRANTLESS DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE
DOCUMENT SUMMARY
Document Site Main:
thewall.civiblog.org
January 20 House Judiciary Democratic Briefing Materials
Here is The Briefing Transcript:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Bruce Fein's Statement:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Jonathan Turley's Statement:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is James Bamford's Statement:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Richard Hersh's Statement:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Caroline Fredrickson's Statement:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Kate Martin's Statement:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Rep. John Conyer's Statement:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Rep. Maxine Water's Statement:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee's Statement:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is the January 6, 2006 Letter to the President requesting information, signed by 28 Members of Congress:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe's Letter to Rep. Conyers. (Tribe is the author of American Constitutional Law):
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is the Judiciary Committee's Ranking Member Conyer's 20 January 2006 Letter to Telecommunication Carriers:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Charter Communication's Response to that letter:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is AT&T's Response to that letter:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is TimeWarner's Response to that letter:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is T-Mobile's Response to that letter:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Reps Conyers' and Scott's January 6, 2006 Letter to Rep. Sensenbrenner asking for an investigation into the FBI's mishandling of the Brandon Mayfield Case:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is the February 24, 2006 Letter to the President, again requesting the appointment of Special Counsel, signed by 18 Members of Congress:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is the March 3, 2006 Letter to Senate Minority Leader Harold Reid from Senate Majority Leader William Frist, M.D., threatening to unilaterally restructure the Intelligence Oversight Committee to prevent a full investigation:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is the former Assistant Secretary of State and current Yale Law Professor Harold Hongju Koh's February 28, 2006 Statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee:
thewall.civiblog.org
CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE PAPERS
Here is Elizabeth B. Bazan's and Jennifer K. Elsea's January 5, 2006 CRS report, "Presidential Authority to Conduct Warrantless Electronic Surveillance to Gather Foreign Intelligence Information" (includes lots of links):
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is Alfred Cummings' January 18, 2006 CRS analysis, "Statutory Procedures Under Which Congress Is To Be Informed of U.S. Intelligence Activities, Including Covert Actions":
thewall.civiblog.org
LAWSUITS:
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION:
Here is the EFF's (initial filing) Class Action Complaint against AT&T (internal page links):
thewall.civiblog.org
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
Here is the ACLU's Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief against the NSA. (extensive internal navigation links included):
thewall.civiblog.org
FOIA
Here is the ACLU'S Pentagon Spying FOIA February 1, 2006, seeking from the Pentagon records from Talon, CIFA, MX of infiltration, intimidation, dirty tricks, and spying on Richard Hersh, The Truth Project, Inc., Patriots for Peace, Ft. Lauderdale Friends, Melbourne Florida Counter Inaugural, Broward Anti-War Coalition, Jeff Nall, Maria Telesca-Whipple, and others:
thewall.civiblog.org
ISSUES BRIEFINGS
Here is the ACLU's October 30, 2003 Issues Briefing "THE MATRIX: Total Information Awareness Reloaded - DATA MINING MOVES INTO THE STATES" with addendum, Shane Harris' February 23, 2006 National Journal report, "TIA Lives On":
thewall.civiblog.org
Policy Statements
AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION
Here is the American Bar Association's Letter to President Bush:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here is the ABA's Roster, Recommendations, and Report sent with that letter.
thewall.civiblog.org
Public Interest Law
OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE
Morton H. Halperin is the Open Society Institute's US Advocacy Director.
Here is Morton Halperin's January 6, 2006 paper
A Legal Analysis of the NSA Warrantless Surveillance Program
thewall.civiblog.org
CENTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES
Kate Martin is the Director of the Center for National Security Studies. Here is Kate Martin's and Brittany Benowitz's December 20, 2005 NSA Spying Memo
thewall.civiblog.org
DCM ARTICLES
David Manchester created this collection of converted warrantless surveillance documents. He is a former military journalist, an IT Contractor, and his articles have appeared in such diverse publications as ECommerce Times, Technocrat, OsOpinion, and Linux Today.
Here is Manchester's February 27 article "Big Brother Is Watching You," a collection including reporting from MSNBC on the 902nd Military Intelligence Group's infiltration of peaceful groups opposing Bush administration policies, Congressman Wexler's response, an October 2005 OMBWatch article, Shane Harris' National Journal article "TIA Lives On," and an article by Manchester:
thewall.civiblog.org
Here Manchester's May 18 article "Big Brother Is Watching You Part 2" - a collection of May 2006 USA Today articles about the NSA Call Database, to which he has contributed an introduction and a closing editorial:
thewall.civiblog.org
NOTE - FAIR USE
In a few cases copyrighted material has been collected or mirrored in this collection of documents. In some cases explicit permission has been obtained, and in others they have been collected in the public interest of getting this material into the hands of the Public, whose civil rights and Fourth Amendment rights are at risk in this current affair; and in this case I believe their inclusion without explicit permission constitutes Fair Use as provided for under 17 U.S.C § 107.
DOWNLOAD THE SET
They are all in this zip file:
thewall.civiblog.org
(NOTE: All links are local, and only refer to the filename alone. So You can download the archive, unzip into any directory, and local links will still work when You are not online... Once You download and unzip it into a specific shared folder, another User on Your local network can download, or browse, as well -dcm)
james of portland, me
Aug 7, 2006 9:17 AM
The PUC will deliberate this complaint case at 2:30 today in their hearing room at 242 State Street Augusta. It's the first building down the hill toward Hallowell from the Capitol building. If any of your readers have the time, I hope they will go. [I'm the "lead complainant" [plaintiff] in this case.] The complainants appreciate this editorial, and the previous one you did as well. |
