The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Nicole Clegg is CEO and president of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. Molly Curren Rowles is the executive director of ACLU of Maine. Sue Roche is the executive director of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP).
Mainers have long cherished their right to privacy. Whether it’s decisions about when to start a family or who we choose to start a family with, we don’t want others involved in our personal, private decisions. This same value applies to our right to privacy in virtual spaces. We don’t want companies tracking us without our consent, collecting sensitive personal information about what we watch, who we talk to or things we buy, and we don’t want this information up for sale on some shadowy marketplace most people will never see or even know exists.
Today, however, huge corporations collect and analyze intimate details about our lives, ranging from precise location data on our phones to consumer health and financial information, so they can influence, track, and profit off us. Worse yet, they can combine these details to paint a picture of our private lives and then sell it to anyone willing to pay – including the government with us never the wiser. This has real consequences for our civil liberties, including freedom of movement, immigrants’ rights and safety, and health care decisions.
The concerns are not theoretical. Government agencies can evade the Fourth Amendment, which protects all people from unreasonable search and seizure, simply by purchasing information from data brokers rather than obtaining a warrant. Historically, that information would have been inaccessible without judicial oversight. Now, the government can skip due process and simply write a check.
For Maine’s immigrant communities who are using the internet to seek legal services and access other services and resources, digital profiles hold details about their lives that could easily be used to target them for mass immigration enforcement and deportation. The Department of Homeland Security has already purchased information from brokers to track people. The stakes could not be higher: Maine residents in ICE detention report sub-human conditions and more than 40 people have died in U.S. detention centers since January 2025. People detained by ICE are at risk of fast-track deportation to potentially life-threatening circumstances, and families are separated and permanently destabilized.
Additionally, data brokers have sold aggregated location information showing visits to hundreds of reproductive health centers. And fertility-tracking apps have shared sensitive reproductive health data with third parties. Privacy protections are not just about convenience; they are about safety.
Maine needs Rep. Amy Kuhn’s LD 1822, the Maine Online Data Privacy Act. This legislation would put reasonable controls on data collection, ban the sale of sensitive data and children’s data, and strengthen protections against misuse.
Maine has long led the nation to protect privacy. In 2019, we enacted the country’s strongest internet privacy law, stopping companies from selling customers’ personal data without their consent. It faced fierce resistance from the same players now opposing LD 1822. Big Tech spending on lobbyists to defeat LD 1822 is four times the total amount spent on any other bill this session.
LD 1822 would address these risks with common sense measures.
First, it requires “data minimization,” meaning companies could only collect the information needed to provide a good or service. Instead of forcing customers to navigate endless privacy settings and consent forms, LD 1822 would set limits on what companies can collect in the first place.
Second, it would prohibit companies from selling sensitive data, including precise location information. Location data can reveal where people worship, attend political events, seek medical care, or meet with friends and family.
Third, LD 1822 would strengthen protections against discrimination in automated decision-making systems that increasingly shape opportunities in employment, education, housing, and lending.
Finally, it would protect our immutable features, like fingerprints and eye scans, which are increasingly used to access devices, accounts, and payment systems. Unlike a password or credit card number, your biometric data cannot be changed if it is ever compromised.
In our view, Maine’s leaders face a clear choice: protect the people of Maine or the special interests profiting from our personal information.
