Here we are, months into the resistance and I know that at times it can feel too tricky to stay on top of the latest outrage.  I’m writing this blog post right now to bring your attention to an urgent privacy issue in Maine that we can’t let slip under the radar.

We need to mobilize right now behind LD 1610, a bill in the Maine Legislature with bipartisan support, to protect consumer privacy on the Internet.

TAKE ACTION: CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS AND TELL THEM TO VOTE YES ON LD 1610.

This bill is necessary because of recent alarming changes to a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule that now allow your data to be sold to the highest bidder.

In April 2017, the U.S. Congress voted to reverse new privacy protections from the FCC that would have required Internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T to seek customers’ permission before sharing their personal information.  Even local Internet companies don’t support this action by Congress.

Because of a certain peculiarity in method Congress used to repeal the rule, any efforts for protections that would be “substantially the same” cannot be passed on a federal level.  Further, privacy safeguards offered by ISPs vary. This means that our only hope for protecting our data is in the Maine Legislature.

Since April, more than a dozen states have introduced legislation to protect customer privacy that was left vulnerable by the FCC rule repeal.  LD 1610 will reverse some of the damage done by the loss of privacy protections at the federal level.  Advertisers and data brokers are increasingly using data to decide what prices to advertise to someone, the content they should steer them to, and even the types of loans to offer them.  For example, until recently, Facebook allowed advertisers to target users based on race, gender, or a medical condition. Before Facebook changed this policy, advertisers had the option of, for instance, excluding anyone with African American “ethnic affinity” from seeing certain housing advertisements. Such practices undermine laws designed to prohibit practices that have been used to discriminate against marginalized populations for decades.

No one should have to choose between using the Internet or protecting their privacy. And using the Internet is no longer a luxury that we can choose not to participate in. The Internet has become a necessity for everything from work to school to paying bills. Therefore, Internet providers have access to some of our most personal information including browsing history, location history, and contacts. Taken together, this data could paint an intimate picture of a person’s religion, medical conditions, and even their hobbies. 

The U.S. Congress has put corporate profits over consumer privacy. Now, it’s up to the states to protect their residents. And it’s up to us, the constituents, to demand our representatives take action on this issue.

CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS TODAY USING OUR HANDY EMAIL TOOL.

Also, here are some ideas for how you can individually take steps protect your data.

Last month’s ACLU of Maine Annual Dinner and Scolnik Award night at Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland broke all previous tallies in terms of attendance, enthusiasm, and funds raised.  We are so grateful for the friends old and new who joined us, for the sponsors who supported us, and for the many volunteers who helped make it happen.

For anyone who missed it, the event kicked off with a cocktail reception, featuring an all-new Selfie Corner where folks could take pictures with liberty-themed props. If you’re on Twitter or Instagram, you can search the hashtag #WeThePeopleME to see the pictures attendees posted.

The formal program featured the public debut of a short video about today’s unprecedented threats to civil liberties and the ACLU’s work here and across the country to fight back. Watch it here:

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Privacy statement. This embed will serve content from youtube.com.

ACLU of Maine Executive Director Alison Beyea spoke next about how the ACLU was built for difficult moments like this. She pledged not to waver in the ACLU’s effort to help create a more perfect union. Justice Louis Scolnik reflected on the ACLU of Maine’s founding nearly 50 years ago, and presented the Award in his name to the Lee Family – Adam, Cathy, Jonathan and their father Shep posthumously, for their multigenerational activism for civil liberties. Next, Senator Angus King spoke about the importance of immigrants for Maine’s future and introduced Senator George Mitchell, the event’s keynote speaker. In keeping with the night’s theme, Senator Mitchell shared his own family’s immigration story and also reflected on the great impact immigrants have had in Maine’s history.

We have received many requests for a copy of Senator Mitchell’s speech, which you can watch here:

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Privacy statement. This embed will serve content from youtube.com.

In short, the 2017 Annual Dinner and Scolnik Award night was a huge success, which begs the question – how could we possibly top this event next year? Ask us in September. For now, we’ll just enjoy our abundant gratitude to all the folks who turned out last month – and since November – to stand up for the rights of all Maine people. 

Within days of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), led by Mary Mayhew, announced that it would seek the Trump Administration’s help dismantling Maine’s Medicaid system. This week, DHHS is making good on that promise and holding hearings on its request that the federal government “waive” certain Medicaid rules – rules that no administration in the past 50 years has waived – in order to further dismantle health care for Mainers.

Commissioner Mayhew has staked her career on reducing the number of Mainers who can access MaineCare.  Under her stewardship, the state has reduced MaineCare’s enrollment by 37 percent, taking health insurance away from approximately 80,000 poor Mainers. Just this year, her department proposed to make poor 19- and 20-year-olds, as well as parents earning more than 40 percent of the federal poverty level (a parent in a family of three earning more than $8,064 per year) ineligible for MaineCare.

Gov. LePage and Commissioner Mayhew want us to think that their proposals are about saving money and prioritizing the neediest among us, as has been their line on all cuts and rollbacks to the social safety over the past six years.  However, that rhetoric is empty when we look at the statistics: since Mayhew started at DHHS, Maine’s national health rank has fallen from 10^th to 22^nd, the number of uninsured children is rising, and Maine’s infant mortality rate has spiked well above the national average (while in most states it is dropping).  Whatever we’re doing with the money that is supposedly saved by kicking people off of health care, the data shows that it is not going to our states’ most vulnerable and needy.

And Mayhew and LePage are so hell-bent on this mission, they are asking for a waiver that might not even be legal. The waiver DHHS is requesting, called a section 1115 waiver, is supposed to be for experimental pilots that further the Medicaid Act’s goals of providing health insurance to low-income families.  But putting time-limits on health care, lowering asset level caps on Medicaid recipients, and creating more rules that are likely to kick people off of their health insurance in no way support the Medicaid Act’s stated objectives.  Instead, this is just another attempt to stigmatize poor people and whittle away at health insurance for our neediest citizens.