Most striking among six states that have asked telecommunication carriers about their roles in the Bush administration’s wiretapping program is how utterly mild Maine’s request is. Last week, a federal judge turned down a Department of Justice attempt to stop public utility commissions from looking into how the phone companies shared records with the government; Maine wouldn’t know about record-sharing even if its PUC inquiry proceeds to its conclusion.

Missouri asked AT&T to report on the number of customers whose calling records were delivered to the National Security Agency; New Jersey wants that information too as well as any communication between carriers there and the NSA; a case in Connecticut wants to know whether the carrier there ever received an NSA request for customer information. All Maine wants is for a Verizon official to confirm that the company’s news releases were accurate when it claimed not to have participated in the NSA program.

But even that, according to a ruling last February, would pose a “potential risk” to national security, which is how Maine ended up in the six-state litigation in California after a case prompted by a complaint from former PUC staff member James Cowie of Portland. The pace of that process suggests the administration will long be out of office and whatever effect potential NSA activity might have had on Maine customers will be well established by the time it concludes. If there is a governmental threat to customers’ privacy, the court has ensured that it can be carried out without penalty for years.

Maine must rely on its Public Utilities Commission on the question of Verizon’s cooperation with NSA because the federal alternative is the Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has stonewalled Congress about discussions around the NSA program. PUC commissioners may not be experts on national security issues, but no one has accused them of showing up at hospital rooms to get approval for illegal programs. Not that we know of, anyway.

The ruling last week in California merely means that the process by which state utility commissions try to protect the rights of customers, as they are charged to do, hasn’t been killed by the federal government. They still are a long way from finding out whose phone records were being secretly passed without court approval to the federal government. Or even whether the carriers’ news releases were accurate.