Seventy-six years ago, Minoru “Min” Yasui sat in a cell at the Multnomah County Jail in Oregon when he read a newspaper article detailing how Walter Pierce, the state’s former governor and U.S. congressman, called for Japanese immigrants in the United States to be sent to Japan. Ever the racist and xenophobe, Pierce wasn’t done. He even suggested revoking birthright citizenship for Americans of Japanese descent.

“The United States has done much for the Japanese but in turn they have abused privileges granted them and have tricked us,” Pierce was quoted as saying. He then claimed that Japanese Americans couldn’t be “Americanized” or “Christianized” and warned that “a contest looms to see whether the Pacific Coast will remain white or turn yellow.”

Min, a young University of Oregon-educated lawyer from Hood River, understood intimately what the hateful words of a powerful man like Pierce could sow. Min was being unjustly held in solitary confinement for a simple but powerful act of civil disobedience in reaction to government repression of Japanese Americans and immigrants in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. On March 28, 1942, he purposefully broke the curfew law that had been placed on all people of Japanese ancestry under Executive Order 9066 by walking up and down the streets of downtown Portland after 8 p.m.   

Min rightly believed Executive Order 9066 — which was eventually used to authorize the forced relocation and incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans — was unconstitutional, so he launched a legal challenge. Before he was sentenced for the curfew violation, he was removed from his home at gunpoint under the order. He was sent to the Portland Assembly Center, which usually held livestock, and then to the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho before and after his nine-month sentence at the Multnomah County Jail.

From his tiny jail cell, he wrote a letter to respond to Pierce’s hateful words, which was published in the Minidoka Irrigator, a newspaper published at the incarceration camp that Min would soon return to after serving his sentence in Oregon.

“Here again is the insinuation that among human races, there are inherent inferiorities and superior qualities of races, not individuals. (Pierce’s) concluding statement marks him for a race-hater, and as an un-American demagogue. The issue ought not to be whether the Pacific Coast should remain ‘white’ or even ‘yellow.’ The issue ought to be whether the Pacific Coast will remain American or degenerate into a land of ‘superior whites.’ I believe Pierce would be willing to destroy Americanism for sake of ‘white man’s superiority.”

The letter was signed: “MIN YASUI, Multnomah County Jail, Portland, Oregon.”

This is just a brief glimpse of Min Yasui’s unwavering lifelong commitment to equal rights and justice in the face of shameful treatment inflicted upon him and more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent by the very individuals who swore to protect the Constitution.

Min took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, but the justices shamefully upheld his conviction. He went on to lead an illustrious career as an attorney and civil rights leader, and his conviction was later vacated. In 2015, Yasui was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, becoming the only Oregonian to receive the nation's highest civilian honor.

In his 1981 testimony to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Min wrote that,

“It seemed to me then, as it does to me now, that to allow our government to act on the basis of one’s ancestry to go unchallenged was to betray all that America and the United States had stood for and proclaimed to all the world, in 1776 and today, that ‘all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ I could not permit myself to stand idly by and allow this to be amended by adding ‘except in time of war, and if you are of Japanese ancestry.’”

The civil rights icon passed away in 1986, but his strength and determination must not be forgotten. We worked to help pass the law that created Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon, and we proudly retrace his bold and defiant steps through downtown Portland each year on March 28.

As we face a resurgence of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals, it is inspiring to remember that, through acts of resistance both small and large, we can fight to create the country we wish to see. With “conviction of the righteousness of our stand,” as Min said in his 1981 testimony, we must defend the rights of all people.

Did you hear the story about the do-gooder tech company that is pushing new state “privacy” bills across the nation?

The pitch by that company, Hu-manity.co — which is so effective its Oregon bill was introduced with more than 40 co-sponsors — is that patients’ health information is being sold for big money without their consent and without providing them any compensation. The solution these bills propose is to prohibit such information from being sold without patients’ permission and without giving them a cut of the profits when their information is sold. Sounds like a big win for privacy and consumers.

Only it’s not. Beware the tech industry’s latest privacy Trojan Horse.

If these bills were purely designed to prevent the sale of patient’s personal information without their express permission, the ACLU would wholeheartedly support such “opt-in” privacy measures. But that is far from these bills’ goal.

Hu-manity.co’s real goal is to use state legislation to create a new way for data sellers to profit off of consumers’ personal information. The current bills being pursued are limited to medical patients, but future iterations are likely to cover a broader range of consumers.

Currently, profits on the sale of patient information are captured when the information is initially sold by a health care provider to a data broker, marketer, or other user and again if the information is resold. While the overall market for personal consumer information, which is predicted to hit $203 billion by 2020, is huge, it is also fairly saturated with existing data mining and selling companies.

Rather than compete with the high volume of companies in the existing market, Hu-manity.co is looking to create a new, less-populated niche from which to generate profits. And that is what is behind the company’s current multi-state legislative push.

Hu-manity.co’s strategy is to use legislation to artificially generate a robust market for “customer information sales agents” who will facilitate — and profit from — the sale of patients’ medical information. That is why Hu-manity.co’s legislation, after it mandates patient consent before selling their information, undermines its own privacy provisions by requiring all consent forms notify patients they can “elect to receive a share of any remuneration received” from the sale of their information — an election Hu-manity.co’s business model is designed to effectuate.  And whereas in the past, health care providers could sell patient information directly to data brokers, Hu-manity.co’s legislation effectively requires that health care providers use companies like itself to complete the transaction.

Turns out the big “P” in these bills is for “profit-shifting” not “privacy.”

The problem for Hu-manity.co is “please help us get rich at the expense of consumers’ privacy” is not a great legislative pitch. So the company instead is casting itself as deeply committed to advancing consumer privacy. In a creative maneuver worthy of George Costanza, even the company’s “humanity” name, and its framing of their work as addressing a “human rights” issue, suggests the company is a nonprofit or some other type of public-good focused entity. It is not.

Hu-manity.co is a for-profit company that promotes a data-as-property model — which even Forbes calls “discredited” and “a privacy nightmare rather than a privacy paradise” — in order to artificially generate market demand and substantial profits through government action.

Hu-manity.co argues that, insofar as patient data is already being sold, its legislation is merely designed to give consumers “ownership” of their data and a cut of the profits. But savvy bill readers will note that the proposed laws contain no defined percentage of the profits patients are entitled to, so they could receive mere pennies of Hu-manity.co’s revenue in return for giving up their privacy.

This lack of transparency and equity is enough to throw these bills’ motives into doubt, but there is a much bigger problem. Namely, that they will adversely and disproportionately impact the privacy of the most vulnerable consumers.

It is well-documented that a wealth-based digital divide exists when it comes to privacy. Wealthier persons are able to afford encrypted iPhones and private email accounts, while poorer persons must buy less secure Android phones and use free email services like Gmail, whose contents are tracked. Under these proposed bills, wealthier persons will easily be able to say no to selling their private information, while poorer persons, who are struggling to pay their bills, will have a far more difficult time refusing the additional income, even if it is small. 

Simply put, these proposed bills do not empower consumers; they take advantage of the most powerless consumers.

All people should be entitled to robust privacy protections, not just the wealthy. The privacy bills the ACLU supports are the type that ensure privacy is protected for all by default; legislatures should certainly enact protections requiring consent before medical information is sold — but without counterproductive strings attached. Hu-manity.co’s Trojan Horse bills are designed to create a new market in which companies, like theirs, act as sales agents to underinformed or financially strapped consumers, who the law will enable them to coax into selling their information.

The disturbing fact here is Hu-manity.co’s misleading sales pitch has been working on lawmakers who have a genuine commitment to privacy and protecting consumers. For those well-meaning elected officials, the ACLU has a simple message: You are being duped.

Hu-manity.co’s bills are being rolled out from coast to coast. By its own admission, the company is currently targeting Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Other states will likely follow. In each and every state they emerge, these bills must be rejected by legislators.