Lt. Michael Johnston gives the media a tour of the Maine Information and Analysis Center, a secretive police intelligence unit run by the Maine State Police, in July 2020. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

Some Maine lawmakers are renewing efforts to tap into what’s happening inside the state’s secretive — and controversial — police intelligence unit.

The Maine Information and Analysis Center, also called the MIAC, has been the subject of controversy since 2020 when a whistleblower complaint said the center was illegally monitoring and storing data on civilians. A subsequent document leak also revealed that it had disseminated what some called shoddy intelligence that infringed on people’s civil rights.

Ever since, lawmakers have been trying to either close the center entirely, or hire an independent auditor to oversee its work.

The bill, LD 419, would create an auditing position within the Maine Office of the Attorney General to oversee accountability and transparency of the center, as well as accept questions and complaints.

Lawmakers from the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee heard mixed testimony at a public hearing Wednesday, with some saying the agency already provides regular reports.

“I think the exact asks of this bill are the exact things that we’re doing today,” MIAC’s director Lt. Mathew Casavant said in a phone interview Thursday. “We’ve taken every one of those steps to do everything that’s outlined in the bill presently. If an auditor would allow for some increased transparency, there’s no issue on our end.”

The proposal was resurrected from last year — it had passed in both chambers but died at the end of the session without funding.

Supporters say the bill provides clearer, more proactive guidance for the new role and may contribute to increased transparency. Its sponsor, Rep. Grayson Lookner, D-Portland, told the committee Wednesday that the auditor would ensure that the agency follows its privacy policies and respects all Mainers.

“This lack of transparency is a direct threat to civil liberties and undermines the trust between Mainers and their government,” Lookner said. “The MIAC was created to protect us, not to spy on us. Its current practices are a betrayal of its original mission and a violation of the public trust.”

HISTORY OF CONTROVERSY

The MIAC is run by the Maine State Police and the Maine Emergency Management Agency, and is one of 80 “fusion centers” in the United States that were created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to prevent future threats by storing and sharing information — though many centers have focused more on domestic crimes.

In 2020, Maine’s fusion center came under fire after George Loder, a state trooper in Scarborough, said he was demoted after reporting illegal information collection practices such as storing personal identifying information on people who did not commit a crime. (He was awarded $300,000 in compensatory damages by a federal jury in 2022.)

Later that year, data from the unit was made public after a nationwide hack of police intelligence showed the center had collected information on racial-justice protestors and others exercising their First Amendment rights.

The Maine Information and Analysis Center in July 2020. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

The center has been under increased scrutiny since then by lawmakers, who passed legislation in 2021 requiring the center to produce annual reports — which they have also criticized for not being detailed enough.

Brendan McQuade, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of Southern Maine who studies fusion centers, testified in favor of the bill because he said it would be a good first step in establishing better oversight of the center.

McQuade has also analyzed the MIAC with his law students and published a “shadow” report on the same day the center released its annual report in 2022. His version called out a flawed audit process and intelligence reports that violate privacy policies.

“For me, this is a disparaging reminder of the effects of mass incarceration,” McQuade said in a phone interview Thursday. “Things like mental illness, substance abuse, those are problems of security. Those are problems of the cops and courts. And that’s a really clumsy tool to deal with those problems.”

RAISING THE STANDARD?

But critics say hiring an auditor is unnecessary because it is essentially the same position as the center’s privacy officer — who is also staffed within the attorney general’s office and coordinates the regular audits and annual reports with an advisory board.

York County Sheriff Bill King, who spoke against the proposal on behalf of the Maine Sheriffs Association, said he hasn’t seen any privacy violations from a “boots on the ground” perspective, and worries the bill would be duplicative of the privacy officer’s current role.

If the bill were to pass, Casavant said, it may eliminate the need for the privacy officer and the 12-member advisory board.

McQuade said previous privacy officers were attorneys for the Maine State Police who were also part of the center’s “self-selecting” board, which reviews policy and produces regular audits.

The Maine Information and Analysis Center in Augusta in 2020. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

Though he said he understands how having an auditor could be duplicative, McQuade said the bill’s language is “much stronger” and raises the standard. Having an independent position written into Maine law would result in clearer, well-defined audits, even if the current officer works for the attorney general’s office, he said.

Casavant said his team has taken steps since 2020 and is continuing to evolve and review their standards “as the world changes and as the mission changes,” citing the annual reports and privacy audits.

“I don’t think that people were really asking a lot of questions about anything for a long time, so we didn’t know what we didn’t know,” Casavant said. “When you start getting questions about how you operate and what your mission is, you try to answer as many of those as you possibly can. We certainly have taken many steps to answer those questions.”

He said representatives from the center have participated in work sessions, public hearings and have a standing invitation out to the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee to visit the center and ask questions. But the nature of their investigative works means they can’t share a lot of details about what they have.

“It’s unfortunate that, in law enforcement, we can’t just provide every single detail, just by the shared nature of the work that we do,” Casavant said. “It could compromise a victim or safety of others. But we have taken some substantial steps to increase the amount of information that we share.”