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Trenton,
NJ – The state of New Jersey will
pursue its arguments in U.S. District Court
in San Francisco on Thursday to dismiss
an attempt by the federal government to
block state officials from investigating
potential violations of state consumer privacy
laws. The state says the federal government
is wrong to invoke national security in
a case in which the state is seeking to
determine whether telephone companies improperly
turned over telephone calling records to
the National Security Agency without a warrant.
Assistant
Attorney General Patrick DeAlmeida is scheduled
to appear in a San Francisco courtroom before
Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District
Court for Northern California to present
the lead argument against the federal government.
Four other states – Missouri, Vermont,
Connecticut and Maine -- are defendants
in the case, which was consolidated by a
federal judicial panel on multi-district
litigation last September. New Jersey’s
case was originally filed in Trenton.
The
state’s enforcement action has been
on-going for 13 months. “New Jersey
law provides that consumers have significant
privacy rights, including rights associated
with their phone calling records,’’
First Assistant Attorney General Anne Milgram
said. “The state of New Jersey must
be able to investigate whether our citizens’
rights have been violated. The federal government
cannot assert a ‘state secrets privilege’
to block our role in enforcing our own state’s
laws.’’
The
Attorney General and the Division of Consumer
Affairs subpoenaed ten telecommunications
companies in May 2006 after published reports
indicated that telephone companies were
turning over telephone calling records to
the National Security Agency without warrants
or judicial oversight.
The
administrative subpoenas sought to determine
what information was provided to the NSA,
what subscriber policies were in effect,
and how the records were disclosed to the
federal government – in other words,
whether the records were obtained pursuant
to a court order or search warrant.
Major
telecommunications companies, including
Verizon Communications, AT&T, Sprint
Nextel, and Qwest refused to respond to
the subpoenas. Instead, the federal government
stepped in last June to quash the subpoenas,
filing suit in U.S. District Court in Trenton
to block the state’s action.
However,
New Jersey has argued that the United States
cannot file suit in federal court to preclude
a state’s chief law enforcement officer
from asking for information necessary to
enforce New Jersey law. In addition, the
state says the legal dispute belongs in
state court, rather than federal court,
because the Justice Department sought to
block a state investigation.
“According
to the United States, no one, not even a
state’s chief law enforcement officer,
can question whether a party’s participation
with the federal government in what has
been reported to be a massive intrusion
on individual privacy violates state law,’’
the state says in its legal papers. “If
Congress intended to vest such sweeping
powers in the President to the derogation
of state officials and the detriment of
the general public’s privacy rights,
it would have stated so expressly. There
is no statement of intent anywhere in federal
law that would preclude the Attorney General’s
investigation.’’
The
number of telephone companies involved in
the state’s action has shrunk in the
last 18 months because of mergers and acquisitions.
For example, Sprint Nextel is now one company,
and Cingular Wireless is now part of AT&T.
In addition to DeAlmeida, Senior Deputy
Attorney General Larry Etzweiler and Deputy
Attorneys General Lorraine Rak, and Joseph
Fanaroff have worked on the case.
>>
NSA
Brief (160k pdf) plug-in
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