The High Cost of ‘Free’: A Presidents’ Day Reality Check on Privacy and the Maine House

I’ve always figured privacy is a lot like a Maine winter: you can pretend it’s not coming all you want, but eventually, you’re going to be out there at 5:00 AM shoveling in your bathrobe because you didn't prepare.

Right now, the "snowstorm" is LD 1822—the Maine Online Data Privacy Act. It just squeaked through the House 73–65. That’s a tight enough margin to make anyone with a lick of sense squint. This isn’t some unanimous, feel-good pat on the back; it’s a bare-knuckled power struggle.

The question I keep chewing on is a simple one: Is the barn door already wide open?

For twenty years, we’ve been handing over our lives for the low, low price of "free." Free email, free maps, free cat videos. But out here in the real world, we know better. Nothing is truly free. We didn’t pay with cash; we paid with the intimate details of who we are, where we go, and what we’re afraid of. At this point, I’m pretty sure Google and ChatGPT have a better handle on my habits than I do—which is funny until you realize they’re selling the map of your brain to the highest bidder.

LD 1822 is Maine’s attempt to build a fence: collect only what’s strictly necessary. Not "collect it because we can," and certainly not "collect it so we can sell it to a broker in Delaware." Just what’s needed to do the job.

I respect the grit it takes to propose that. Treating people like "raw material" for a profit margin is a hell of a way to run a society. But let’s be honest—this is David versus Goliath, and Goliath has a much better legal team and a limitless budget for "compliance theater."

You can already hear the lobbyists warming up their favorite weapon: calling it "anti-business." It’s a classic move—take a basic human boundary and frame it as a job-killer. That’s how you get people to vote against their own interests.

The uncomfortable truth? We’re trying to resurrect a 1990s idea of privacy in a world that’s already been digitized, indexed, and sold. There isn’t a "undo" button for the last two decades of data mining.

So maybe we aren’t "getting privacy back." Maybe we’re just deciding where the new line is drawn:

Stopping the bleeding from here on out.

Making "accountability" mean more than a fine that looks like a rounding error to a tech giant.

Refusing to accept a business model built on the hope that we’re too busy to notice what’s being stolen.

Sure, we probably need a national policy so we don't end up with fifty different sets of rules. But Maine has a long history of being the stubborn first "no" in a room full of "maybes."

Rep. Amy Kuhn stood there telling the truth about 'surveillance pricing' while the opposition, led by Rep. Rachel Henderson, tried to tell us we were moving too fast. Too fast? We’ve been giving this stuff away for twenty years. If anything, we’re a couple of decades late to the party.

This House vote showed us who’s willing to stand their ground and who gets the shakes when the big money starts talking. When the Senate gets back to work on the 24th, we’re going to see exactly who thinks Maine belongs to its people—and who thinks it belongs to the servers in Silicon Valley.

Privacy isn’t a tech problem. It’s a power problem. And around here, we know that power always leaves a trail in the mud.