The Maine Public Utilities Commission is expected to consider today whether it should investigate the question of Verizon’s cooperation in Maine with the National Security Agency. Writing in late July about this prospect, the Department of Justice told PUC Chairman Kurt Adams such an investigation would be “a fruitless endeavor because the [PUC] would be unable to obtain the information needed to reach a decision on the merits of the complaint.”

That sounds approximately correct. But in the extraordinary circumstances of a secret government program possibly being conducted in Maine without congressional oversight, or oversight from any judicial body, state regulators – Maine is just one of 20 states where this issue has arisen – must determine how far they can reach within the bounds of the law and with respect to national security.

This is not something the PUC should be eager to do, because the oversight of a federal program truly is a federal issue. But no one in a position to demand oversight is taking a firm hand in this, and no one outside government is said to be allowed to know. Complainants, in this case led by former PUC staff member James Cowie of Portland, have nowhere else to turn but to the state level.

Mr. Cowie began a series of e-mail exchanges with Verizon over this issue well before a story last May in USA Today described a broad program of government surveillance through the phone companies. Government and the phone companies have gone from conceding that some sort of program exists to denying any such thing to neither confirming nor denying any or all of it. This sounds less like an attempt to protect state secrets as it does political waffling.

It is worth noting that two weeks ago in Northern California U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker rejected a government demand to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a federal warrantless surveillance program. Judge Walker wrote, “While the court recognizes and respects the executive’s constitutional duty to protect the nation from threats, the court also takes seriously its constitutional duty to adjudicate the disputes that come before it.”

That is roughly the situation before the PUC, but the Justice Department ignores this when it asserts that any document request of Verizon “would place Verizon in a position of having to confirm or deny the existence of information that cannot be confirmed or denied without harming national security.” There is no evidence for such a blanket conclusion – and, surely, there cannot be a terrorist on the planet who is not aware of the possibility that his phone calls may be monitored.

The PUC should proceed, slowly and carefully, because no one else is looking out for the privacy of Maine telephone users. As with other states, it will hit a wall of silence at the federal level, but their end points will vividly describe where Congress should take up its oversight responsibility.