Dear friends and neighbors,

In my last newsletter, which you can read here, I shared that I had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information about TestNebraska.com, the website that the Governor has been promoting for COVID-19 health assessments. I previously requested this information from both the Governor’s office and the Department of Administrative Services, but my requests were ignored. I received the contracts, which you can view here, and I expect the rest of my request for all correspondence about TestNebraska to be fulfilled in the next two weeks.

Here are my concerns today.

The service agreement with the software company behind TestNebraska says that they may sell deidentified, aggregated data. I don’t think that’s the biggest sin—the problem is that 1. Nebraskans aren’t told this up front before they opt in to take the assessment, and 2. The contract wasn’t even shown to the legislature until I FOIA’d it.

The tech and entrepreneurship community in Nebraska deserved to have $27 million invested in them for an effort like this. This could have been a massive stimulus for jobs and industry in our local entrepreneurial communities, and an opportunity for collaboration between university researchers, state public health departments, and the Silicon Prairie.

To fix this, Nebraska should add an explicit message to the first page of the assessment explaining that data you share may be deidentified, aggregated, and sold. I also believe Nebraska should get a share of any sales from the exploitation of this data, and that all of those sales and transactions should be public.

There will always be people who say, “I don’t care what the government knows about me, I have nothing to hide.” There are people who say, “Everyone acts like big corporations don’t have all of your personal data already.” There will also always be people who say, “I’m happy to participate in this so that people can be healthy and we can do research based on the data.” That’s fine–frankly, I’m one of those people. But it’s wrong when we don’t give people the opportunity to opt into that by making an educated choice. And it’s unconscionable when that choice is taken away from you by government.

At this link you can view the contracts for yourself. I also recommend that you read this excellent reporting by Lincoln Journal Star reporter Chris Dunker.

As always, please let me know if I can be of any more assistance. Email is the best way to get in touch with me, at mhunt@leg.ne.gov.

Many thanks,
Meg