Answers sought in legality of Station fire phone recordings
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) pressed federal authorities Thursday to clarify whether the U.S. Forest Service violated privacy laws by recording telephone calls to an emergency center during the 2009 Station fire.
Schiff said a report he received from the U.S. Agriculture Department’s inspector general indicated that recordings made from two Angeles National Forest phone lines appeared to be illegal because callers were not given the opportunity to consent to being taped.
In an emailed statement, Schiff wrote that the “report suggests that the law was broken but inexplicably fails to reach a conclusion.”
The congressman sent a letter to Inspector General Phyllis K. Fong asking her to determine whether the Forest Service broke the law and, if so, to provide “the appropriate legal remedy [for] those whose calls were illegally recorded.”
-- Paul Pringle, Los Angeles Times
Photo: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), left, seen in April, wants to know whether the U.S. Forest Service violated privacy laws by recording two phone calls without asking the callers for permission. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times / April 28, 2011