Every session the Affiliate lobbies on more than one hundred pieces of legislation, so the newsletter can only highlight a small percentage of our activities. In order to give members a better sense of the scope of the Affiliate’s work, we have picked one topic – privacy – and briefly summarize below how the ACLU helped shape lesser pieces of legislation on the issue, in addition to the more prominent bills summarized elsewhere. Seven examples appear below:
- The FY 2005 budget includes a telephone surcharge to pay for a Geographic Information System (GIS) database, which will allow emergency response personnel to pinpoint exactly where a 911 cell phone call is coming from in case of an emergency. The General Assembly approved an ACLU amendment sponsored by Rep. Charlene Lima that bars this technology from being used for anything other than its stated purpose.
- If you owe any taxes to the state, a new law will prevent you from obtaining or renewing your driver’s license or any professional license. To implement the law, licensing agencies will demand applicants’ social security numbers, which will then be provided to the taxation division for data-matching. An adopted ACLU amendment, also sponsored by Rep. Lima, bars the agencies from using or sharing the SSN’s for any other purpose.
- New legislation establishes a stroke prevention task force, with broad powers to collect data on strokes in order to improve prevention and treatment protocols in the state. An ACLU confidentiality amendment sponsored by Rep. Edith Ajello will ensure that the task force is limited to receiving medical information that is not identifiable to particular patients.
- Another new initiative establishes a health care technology infrastructure fund for the purpose of promoting technologies to “improve the quality, safety and efficiency of health care services” in the state. Noting that the goal of improving the efficiency of health care services can easily come at the expense of confidentiality and security of health care data, the ACLU proposed an amendment requiring that privacy considerations be an integral aspect of the fund’s projects, and expanding the fund’s purpose to include the development of technologies that themselves help maintain the security of patient information. The amendment was adopted.
- To provide businesses with a better idea of where their health care costs were going, one of the many health insurance reform bills considered this session proposed to give employers with 50 or more employees the right to obtain information on medical claims paid for by the employer’s group health plan. Concerned that the information might enable employers to deduce the medical conditions of some of their employees, the ACLU drafted an amendment, adopted by the legislature, that will provide employers only with aggregate cost figures in four broad categories that cannot be used to identify individuals or their medical conditions.
- To reduce underage drinking, a new law requires sold beer kegs to include a label that contains identifying information about the purchaser. As originally worded, the label would have included the full ID number of any document the purchaser submitted to prove his or her age. Thanks to an ACLU amendment, only the last four digits will be listed.
- In an important initiative to reduce identify theft, bills were introduced to prohibit stores from printing customers’ full credit card number on store receipts. However, the bills contained no meaningful remedies against stores that violated the ban. Language suggested by the ACLU to correct this oversight was adopted.
