Saying the Texas attorney general is violating the electronic privacy rights of their subscribers, two Lone Star Internet service providers have refused to turn over information about members of a secessionist movement who use their services.
The movement, known as the Republic of Texas, holds that Congress' 1845 annexation of the independent state was illegal and that only a citizen vote can legalize its status as part of the Union. Charging everyone from Governor George Bush Jr. to private citizens with the illegal seizure of property, the Republic has flooded state courts with liens that have been declared illegal.
In a counterattack, Attorney General Dan Morales - of what the movement calls "the de facto state of Texas" - on 2 April served subpoenas on 10 ISPs who do business with the members of the group that state officials seem to delight in calling ROT.
The subpoenas demand copies of all members' email, login and user IDs, subscriber applications, and billing information - including credit card and checking-account numbers. The court order was filed as part of a civil case, Morales v. Van Kirk et al., that the attorney general brought last June to stop the movement from posing as a government entity and clogging the courts with liens.
Eight of the ISPs have agreed to comply with the subpoenas. Two others, Internet Texoma Inc. and the Overland Network, have refused. Both say the subpoenas violate a portion of the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act stipulating that the information sought must be "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."
In a Friday letter to the attorney general, W. Scott McCollough, the Texas Internet Service Providers Association attorney representing both ISPs, stated that the subpoenas "do not overcome our ... federal obligations."
"This is a civil, not a criminal case," McCollough said. "Plus, the AG's office hasn't gone through due process in requesting the information. They didn't serve us with a search warrant. And if my clients turned over the information without a warrant, there's always the possibility that these people could sue us. I don't know if they would since they don't acknowledge the court system, but they could."
Attorney general's spokesman Ward Tisdale said on Friday that since the "Republic of Texas folks do most of their communication over the Internet, we're simply taking the reasonable steps to gather all the information we need in the course of our investigation."
Responding to McCollough's letter, the attorney general's office took a slightly different tack in an effort to skirt the issue of the federal privacy law. It called off the subpoenas and told McCollough it will file a civil investigative demand, a less-stringent request for material relevant to ongoing litigation.
