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This week, the Senate took up some amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. A version of this legislation gives telephone companies, such as Verizon, immunity for possible illegal breaches of the privacy of their telephone customers. This potential illegal activity may have taken place in cooperation with the Administration’s warrantless wiretapping and data mining programs, begun shortly after 9/11.
In Maine, the Public Utilities Commission had begun a preliminary investigation of Verizon’s activity, in response to a complaint from a number of Maine citizens. The request for an investigation was supported by both the Public Advocate, and the Maine Civil Liberties Union, on the grounds that customers may have had their fourth amendment rights to privacy violated, and media companies, such as the Coastal Journal, may have had our first amendment rights to a free press violated.
The federal Department of Justice brought action against the PUC to shut down the investigation, in spite of the fact that the Maine Attorney General strongly supported the PUC at federal court. The PUC was ordered to temporarily stop its investigation, and the issue is now pending before a federal court of appeals.
If illegal wiretapping or data sharing is eventually confirmed, it will be apparent that Verizon and other large telecommunications companies have violated various long-standing state and federal laws that protect the privacy of customers of telecommunications companies.
However, if the pending immunity legislation is enacted into law, Maine’s telephone customers will be denied a hearing to determine whether their constitutional rights and privacy rights were violated, and will be denied redress if such violations occurred.
In 1991, the Maine Legislature declared that:
“Telephone subscribers have a right to privacy and the protection of this right to privacy is of paramount concern to the State (35-A M.R.S.A. §7101-A)”
The Coastal Journal joins with the Public Advocate in urging Senators Snowe and Collins to recognize that important concerns in the State of Maine - and essential liberties under the federal constitution - would be frustrated if they vote for retroactive immunity.
Let the judicial system decide whether Verizon is culpable before giving them a retroactive free pass for violating the liberties of Maine citizens ... and citizens of the whole country. We urge the Senators to vote against retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.
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