It was a short retirement for James "Doug" Cowie.

Months after he ended an 18-year career with the Maine Public Utilities Commission, much of it spent looking into telecommunications customers' complaints, Cowie filed one of his own.

James "Doug" Cowie, 75, is using state laws and state agencies to try to bring accountability to what the National Security Agency is doing with warrantless wiretapping. (Staff photo by John Patriquin)

Under the heading, "Request for commission investigation," Cowie questioned whether Verizon Communications Inc., the state-regulated provider of local phone service in Maine, was cooperating with the National Security Agency in warrantless domestic wiretapping and the agency's data-mining program.

The filing began a process that led civil libertarians in 24 other states to file complaints with their own utility regulators. That led the U.S. Justice Department to file lawsuits against Maine and four other states challenging their right to look into areas that involve national security.

Along with potential congressional hearings, civil libertarians say, those court cases promise the best hope of revealing whether the government violated the rights of citizens in the war on terror.

"It had a substantial effect," said Christopher Calabrese, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program.

"What he did was set an important example that we have tried to replicate across the country," Calabrese said. "I think he deserves a lot of credit for innovation."

Cowie's idea was simple. Within the state laws governing the behavior of public utilities are protections of customers' privacy. If telecommunications companies like Verizon shared customers' information with the NSA without warrants, then they violated state privacy laws.

That would put their actions under the purview of the state PUC.

"People had been tending to think in terms of federal laws and federal actors," Calabrese said. "Doug was one of the first to think of state laws and state agencies as a way to bring some accountability to what the NSA is doing."

Cowie, 75, lives in Portland with his wife, Annie. He says he only has two hobbies: collecting fountain pens and listening to jazz on vinyl LPs.

But he also has a long-established habit of standing up for his beliefs.

After graduating from the University of New Hampshire with a math degree, he spent most of the 1960s working for a military contractor, designing test programs for rockets that could carry intercontinental nuclear payloads.

In 1969, "totally disillusioned" with the defense industry and the nuclear arms race, Cowie walked away from his job and moved to Maine.

He spent a year teaching math at Bridgton Academy. When it was his turn to speak at a Sunday evening chapel service, Cowie shared his experience in what he calls "the bomb business."

The next day, the students were inspired to go out on strike, and administrators allowed them to conduct a "teach-in" on peace issues.

Cowie left teaching to work in public health consulting before joining the PUC as a staff member in 1987. He began work on electric-rate cases and eventually moved into telecommunications investigations, challenging companies' assertions and testifying on behalf of consumers.

Cowie was part of the first regulatory investigation that proved that telephone companies were not, as they had long claimed, subsidizing local service with long-distance revenue.

"What the PUC does affects almost everybody's life," Cowie said. "I just loved that feeling of doing something important."

During his last month at work, Cowie got disturbed by reading an article that alleged telephone companies were sharing data with the NSA without requiring warrants. The companies were accused of giving the government access to switching equipment that could conceivably let it listen to individual calls and analyze calling patterns.

The companies denied turning over any records, but Cowie felt they did not address whether they allowed the government access so they could take it for themselves.

Cowie asked a Verizon employee he had worked with if there was such a program in Maine, and he said he didn't know. He wrote to Verizon's president, and was told that the company could neither confirm nor deny its involvement.

In May, Cowie filed his complaint with the PUC, using a state law that allows any 10 people to formally raise questions. He was the lead complainant, joined by 21 other Mainers.

"If they had called and said they weren't doing it, I would never have filed a complaint," he said. "If Congress had done an oversight investigation, I wouldn't have done it."

Instead, Cowie moved forward, putting himself in the uncomfortable position of being in the spotlight.

Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, said his action has been valuable.

"His willingness to stand up has meant a lot. It takes a lot of guts to be willing to get involved," she said. "Doug had an idea that became a model for a national campaign. He inspired activists who were concerned about domestic surveillance with the notion that we could actually do something about the overwhelming national issue."

Cowie said he was just raising questions.

"I think you have to be vigilant," Cowie said. "You can't trust what the government says and accept their glib arguments.

"It's no different than the sheriff coming into your house, grabbing whatever he wants, doing whatever he wants with it and not telling you why," he said. "I don't want them getting my stuff."

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