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Missouri Targets AT&T Over Surveillance
by Michael Martinez
A pair of regulators in Missouri this week issued subpoenas demanding information from AT&T about its participation in a National Security Agency surveillance program.
Missouri Public Service Commissioners Robert Clayton and Steve Gaw served a series of subpoenas to determine whether AT&T violated the state's privacy laws by providing the government with the telephone calling records of its customers.
AT&T has been given until July 12 to respond to the subpoenas. Clayton said he would seek a remedy in a circuit court if AT&T refuses to comply.
AT&T has not disclosed any information about its role in the NSA program. But in a letter to the commission last week, AT&T Missouri Senior Vice President Alfred Richter said that providing regulators with the information they have requested could "place the company in violation."
The request in Missouri comes only a few days after the Justice Department sued New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber over a similar probe. The department has argued that sensitive government information would be compromised if such cases were allowed to proceed.
Clayton said he was aware of the Justice Department's suit in New Jersey, but he has not had enough time to review the complaint thoroughly. He said the subpoenas he has served are specific to consumer privacy statutes in Missouri.
Privacy advocates in Rhode Island also are concerned about the response of the Bell companies to a complaint they filed last month with the state's Division of Public Utilities and Carriers.
The Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union on May 24 filed a complaint with state regulators requesting that they launch an investigation into whether AT&T and Verizon Communications violated the state's privacy laws.
In a letter to the commission, Verizon Associate Counsel Alexander Moore said there is no basis to assume the company has violated the law and that it is "precluded from providing information about its cooperation, if any, with this national security matter."
In a Monday statement, Stephen Brown, the executive director of Rhode Island's ACLU affiliate, said the response of the phone companies is "straight out of George Orwell," the author who made fears of government invasions of privacy famous.
"In essence, they are telling us, 'You shouldn't assume we did anything wrong, and even if we did, it's none of your business, and even if it is, we can't tell you anyway,'" he said. "This encapsulates the Bush administration's unceasing penchant for keeping the public in the dark about its so-called war on terrorism, but Rhode Islanders deserve a better answer than that."
Court Blocks New Louisiana Videogame Law
A federal judge in Louisiana has granted a request by the videogame industry to place a temporary injunction on a new law to prohibit the sale of violent games to minors.
The measure, signed last week by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, imposes penalties of up to $2,000 or one year in prison upon vendors if they sell restricted games to children younger than 18. The Entertainment Software Association and Entertainment Merchants Association filed a lawsuit the following day to overturn the law.
Similar statutes in California, Illinois and Michigan have been struck down on constitutional grounds during the past year.
Louisiana state Rep. Roy Burrell, the author of the bill, told The Shreveport Times earlier this week that he expected the industry to challenge the measure. "I knew it would happen," he said. "But this being my first time, it shocked me."
Burrell said that he was confident the measure would withstand constitutional scrutiny and that he constructed the bill based upon standards outlined by the Supreme Court in its Miller v. California decision.
"I'm all for free speech but not at the detriment of children," Burrell told the Times. "If I'm wrong, I apologize, but I don't see it that way. When it relates to protecting these kids, I don't apologize."
In a statement released last week, ESA President Douglas Lowenstein said the Louisiana law is an "unnecessary measure" and the legislators behind it "know full well that this bill is destined to meet the same fate as other failed efforts to ban videogame sales."
"Signing this bill into law would no doubt hurt the state's economy, essentially hanging up a 'Stay Out of Louisiana' sign on the state's borders for videogame companies," Lowenstein said.
EMA President Bo Anderson said that the Louisiana law is not unique to the statutes that already have been struck down and that legislators behind it are "squandering" taxpayer money.
"The Louisiana law suffers from the same constitutional defects as the Michigan law and the five other videogame laws that have been enjoined on constitutional grounds," Anderson said. "It will meet the same fate, and the taxpayers of Louisiana will end up having to pay for the legislature's reckless gamble."
Holes Found In Montana's Computer System
Auditors in Montana this week told lawmakers that the state's computer system is highly vulnerable and that much of the sensitive data for which it is responsible is not secure.
A report compiled for the legislature by the state's Legislative Audit Division found that security controls implemented by the state's Administration Department, which is responsible for the system, are fragmented and that the department does not have a cost-effective and comprehensive strategy to identify and manage threats.
The system has crashed twice in the past month. A fire alarm Monday in the building that houses the system triggered gas extinguishers that shut it down for several hours. Hardware failures last month took the system offline for almost an entire day.
"Because the department is responsible for protecting equipment that houses some of the data most critical to state government operations, more emphasis should be placed on ensuring threats to all data center facilities, resources and equipment are addressed," the report said.
Specifically, the audit found that inventories of the system and the data it stores are outdated, and that software purchased last year to modernize such inventories has been used on a limited basis.
The report also found that the building that houses the state's data center is insecure. It said ceiling panels throughout the facility could easily be lifted up and that access to secure rooms could be obtained by climbing in crawl spaces, negating the protection offered by keycard operated doors.
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