Versant Power has received subpoenas for more than 50 locations suspected of housing illegal marijuana grow houses, the utility company said — and now it’s proposing a controversial tactic it claims could help identify those places faster.
Versant wants a rule change allowing the company to report high energy usage to police in an effort to identify illegal marijuana grow houses, attorney Arrian Myrick-Stockdell said during a March hearing with the Maine Public Utilities Commission.
“The point is that we can identify the location faster than they can,” Myrick-Stockdell said.
The federal government is cracking down on illegal marijuana grow houses, with more than 30 raids taking place statewide so far this year. But the proposal by Versant is being criticized by consumer privacy advocates who believe such a rule change would be unconstitutional.
“Utilities should not be doing that. They have a duty of protecting their customers’ privacy,” Jay Stanley, an American Civil Liberties Union privacy expert, told the Associated Press while comparing a utility combing through customer data to an illegal dragnet.
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