On Wednesday night, the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee passed the Community Health Information Safety and Privacy Act (CHISPA). The bill would give New Mexicans more control over their data and prevent automatic tracking.
On Let’s Talk New Mexico, host Ty Bannerman talked to Marcus Trujillo with Indigenous Women Rising, Adrien Lawyer of the Transgender Resource Center and attorney Deanna Warren with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico about the bill and what it would mean for New Mexicans.
MARCUS TRUJILLO: NM CHISPA is acknowledging that our data is being collected and sold and used without our consent. Corporations, data brokers and government entities, you know, they gather our information without clear disclosure, and it's this coalition that's building is fighting back and pushing back against that. What this does is it addresses the critical gap between consumers and how our data is being collected, processed and sold and even stored online to third party entities. So yeah, I believe that CHISPA is essential to safeguarding our privacy and freedoms in an increasingly data-driven community and world.
KUNM: So Adrien, the Transgender Resource Center, is part of this coalition that came together to advocate for this legislation. Could you tell me what kind of data are we talking about here?
ADRIEN LAWYER: Your geolocation data is tracked by a lot of websites, biometric data, and then that data is able to be given or sold or traded, even with entities like ICE. So when we look at things like immigration enforcement, people crossing over state lines, shopping at Walmart, this data is being tracked, and then people can be tracked that way
KUNM: And Deanna the ACLU is part of this coalition as well. How is this kind of data collection that we're talking about a civil liberties issue?
DEANNA WARREN: Specifically on civil liberties, if you think about the enormous footprint that we all leave in the digital space, everything from, you know, posting on social media, our browsing history, where we're asking questions, potentially about our health. Corporations are collecting all of this information. Our government is collecting all of this information, and what we've seen federally is an uptick of scrutiny on people who are posting things that are contrary to this administration's opinions. Not only is it a civil liberties issue in terms of First Amendment rights, but the right to privacy, the right to access medical services, all of these things are engendered by this bill and preventing those surveillance technologies from erecting what's called a geofence to look at cars going into clinics or seeking in-person immigration services. So we're excited that New Mexico will be at the forefront of protecting marginalized communities and their data.
KUNM: So how exactly will the NM CHISPA specifically protect that data? We're talking about the internet. That data is already, you know, out there and undoubtedly has been scraped. What exactly will this bill do to prevent it from being either misused or mishandled?
WARREN: So currently, we don't have a comprehensive data privacy law on the books in New Mexico, and for that reason, corporations are allowed to collect, process, sell all of our data. So those companies could turn around and sell that data to private individuals, to data brokers to build profiles of individuals in New Mexico. And that might sound innocent, mostly, they're, you know, targeting us for advertising, right? So it's a profit driven model, but it could be more nefarious. It can really turn into a profiling machine and discriminating against people that they don't want – if they don't want a trans person living in their apartment building, or if they want to increase insurance premiums for a person because of the medications they take. And so I think we all need to be aware that that's happening, and we should have agency over our data.
The CHISPA bill now heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee. You can hear the full episode of Let’s Talk New Mexico on Transgender Rights here or learn more about the legislation here.
