Privacy Bills on the Governor's Desk

All session we've been reporting to you on the progress of some very important bills to protect privacy in Maine. We're happy to report that three of those bills - which would require warrants before the police could track your cell phone, read your text messages, or spy on you with a drone - have been passed by the Legislature and now sit on the governor's desk, one signature away from becoming law! These are the bills:

July 2, 2013

All session we've been reporting to you on the progress of some very important bills to protect privacy in Maine. We're happy to report that three of those bills - which would require warrants before the police could track your cell phone, read your text messages, or spy on you with a drone - have been passed by the Legislature and now sit on the governor's desk, one signature away from becoming law! These are the bills:

LD 236: An Act to Protect the Privacy of Citizens from Domestic Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Use
  • What: Places state limits on domestic drone use, including requiring a warrant or court order for law enforcement purposes.
  • Why: The Federal Aviation Administration is poised to make room in domestic airspace for drones by 2015, and they estimate that by 2020 there will be 10,000 drones in the sky. Drone technology is very powerful and may have some valid uses such as searching for lost people in remote areas. But law enforcement should not be allowed to conduct mass surveillance of law-abiding Mainers without a warrant.
LD 415: An Act to Require a Warrant to Obtain the Location Information of a Cell Phone or Other Electronic Device
  • What: Requires a warrant or court order for law enforcement to engage in location tracking of cell phones and other GPS-enabled devices.
  • Why: Tracking the location of a person’s cell phone without a warrant is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. A number of law enforcement agencies across the country obtain probable cause warrants before tracking cell phone location, but here in Maine, there’s no consistent standard statewide. Reasonable safeguards – the probable cause standard and review by a judge – will ensure that legitimate investigations can proceed, while protecting against unjustified invasions of citizens’ privacy.
LD 1377: An Act To Protect Cellular Telephone Privacy
  • What: Requires law enforcement agencies and law enforcement officers to get a probable cause warrant before obtaining text message content and cell phone records
  • Why: Our phone records are private, and without probable cause and a warrant they should remain that way. The police aren't allowed to read our personal letters without a warrant, and there's no reason our text content and records should be any different.

We made privacy our number one priority for this legislative session because we believe that Maine needs stronger laws that shield us from overreaching surveillance by the government and ensure that our most personal details stay private. These bills do just that. They require law enforcement get a warrant based on probable cause – just like the Constitution requires – when they peek into your most personal information. Just as the police must get a warrant before searching your home, so should they before collecting information about you with a drone or searching through the content of your cell phone records.

The bills now before the governor are LDs 236, 415 and 1377. The governor has until next week to sign or veto them. If you agree that Mainers deserve these important privacy protections, call his office at 207-287-3531. Leave a message for the governor urging him to sign these three bills into law.