BANGOR, Maine (AP) — Operators of illegal marijuana growing businesses hidden inside rural Maine homes don’t have to worry too much about nosy neighbors. But your staggering electricity bills could give rise to a new whistleblower.
An electricity company has made an unusual proposal to help authorities combat these illicit operations, which are being investigated for links to transnational crime. Critics, however, fear that the measure could violate customers’ privacy.
More than a dozen states that have legalized marijuana have seen an increase in illegal marijuana growing operations that use large amounts of electricity. And Versant Power of Maine has been receiving subpoenas — sometimes for 50 locations at once — from law enforcement, said Arrian Myrick-Stockdell, a corporate attorney. It would be much more efficient, he suggested to utility regulators, to flip the script and allow electric companies to report their suspicions to authorities.
“Versant has a very high success rate in identifying these locations, but we do not have the ability to proactively communicate with law enforcement,” Myrick-Stockdell told commissioners.
The proposal, to be considered next week by the Maine Public Utilities Commission, is being criticized by consumer privacy advocates and others who think the service is straying from its path.
The nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center believes such a regulatory rule would be unconstitutional because the electric utility would be allowed to provide private information about consumers “without probable cause, without a warrant, without judicial review,” said Alan Butler , executive director of the group. The Associated Press.
The Washington-based group has never heard of a proposal like this, he said, even though federal courts have authorized the sharing of consumer data from so-called “smart” electric meters for the limited purposes of managing the power grid.
Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, compared a utility that scrapes customer data to an illegal network. “Dealers shouldn’t do this. They have a duty to protect the privacy of their customers,” he said.
Historically, courts have granted special privacy protections for what happens inside a home.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that federal agents’ use of thermal imaging equipment without a search warrant to detect heat from marijuana grow lights inside an Oregon man’s home was unconstitutional.
Maine’s utility regulatory process comes as law enforcement authorities target marijuana cultivation operations in which rural homes are purchased, destroyed and turned into high-end, high-yield indoor farms.
In total, 20 states have been dealing with phenomena similar to what is happening in Maine.
The common denominator is that criminals appear to be taking advantage of laws legalizing marijuana in an attempt to go unnoticed to produce marijuana that is sold in states where cannabis is illegal. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration are investigating any links these operations may have to criminal syndicates, including Chinese organized crime.
In Oklahoma, farms, empty nursing homes, bowling alleys and warehouses were turned into marijuana production operations after voters legalized cannabis for medicinal use in 2018. Police began cracking down after noticing straw owners in China and Mexico ran many of the licensed operations, said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.
In Maine, the situation looks different, with low-priced home purchases in little-visited locations, installations of energy-intensive growing equipment and improved electrical services to support operations. The police took note of this energy consumption. At one of the seized homes in Maine, the monthly electric bill grew from about $300 to nearly $9,000, according to court documents. There were over 100 of them at any given time.
Grow houses operate by a similar playbook in terms of the types of homes used and indoor setups with powerful lights, climate control, and chemicals. However, they are not linked like a typical franchise agreement, making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to link them to a single union, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Lizotte told the Associated Press.
In Somerset County, Sheriff Dale Lancaster, whose deputies executed search warrants on 21 marijuana operations, said law enforcement works best with community support and described Versant’s proposal as a “good first step.”
Republican Senator Susan Collins, who has aggressively lobbied the FBI over illegal marijuana operations, also supports Versant’s efforts to be an ally to law enforcement agencies. “Cooperation between Maine electric utilities and law enforcement could be of great help to county sheriffs and other officials who have worked tirelessly to combat these illegal grow operations,” she said.
Versant’s proposal was discussed by the Maine Public Utilities Commission earlier this year.
Commission staff member Derek Davidson mused about the possibility of a threshold for reporting spikes in electrical consumption to police, but noted that sometimes there are legitimate users “who just make astronomical use.”
Mark Morisette of Central Maine Power said it “seems like a strange line to consider crossing” and supported his call for caution with an example of a 100-fold increase in electricity consumption after a flood, which required temporary heaters and fans to dry out. outside.
CMP, the state’s largest electric utility, now formally opposes the change but will continue to fully cooperate with authorities if customer information is requested through a subpoena, spokesman Jonathan Breed said.
Maine Public Advocate William Harwood is also against the proposal, arguing that there are many legitimate reasons for increased customer consumption, such as the installation of heat pumps and electric vehicle charging stations. “We believe dealerships should focus on consumer needs and customer service rather than alerting authorities to questionable customer behavior,” he said.
