The digital surveillance of transgender people

In recent years, we’ve seen a surge of state laws and policies affecting trans people. Half of states have banned or restricted gender affirming care for minors, with some adding restrictions for adults. The ACLU is tracking more than 500 bills that have been introduced across the country.

The enforcement of such laws, as with recent bans on abortion and related reproductive care, has raised concerns about tracking people’s digital footprints. So much of daily life is conducted online, and there are currently no federal data privacy protections.

KB Brookins, a writer based in Austin, Texas, wrote about a personal experience that drove home concerns about their trail of digital data. The following is an edited transcript of their story:

KB Brookins: My full name is KB Brookins, [and] my pronouns are they/them. I wrote a piece titled “Trans Texans Are Being Surveilled, This Is Everyone’s Issue,” and in that piece I kind of detail what it’s like to change your name and gender marker in Texas. First, I had to get from a doctor a letter saying that I had a gender identity disorder. I had to sign a form, kind of saying like proof of indigency, so I didn’t have to pay the fee. And then, I also had to fill out a number of forms to request this from the state. So it’s kind of given to you as a request, saying, like, “I request that this be changed.” That request can be denied. Oftentimes, if you’re in some kind of county in Texas that is more conservative, doesn’t have a judge that believes in that kind of thing, they can just deny it. I think my judge maybe took like six weeks to approve mine. And then I went through the process of changing it on things like driver’s license, birth certificate, all of the forms that we put our names on. But honestly, once I left the driver’s license office, I think that was the last thing that I got changed, I finally felt like a big breath.

Then, probably like six months after going through that process, I learned that Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office requested a list of people who had changed their gender on the Texas driver’s license and other department records during the past two years from the Texas Department of Public Safety. And nothing good has ever come from a governmental entity making a list of marginalized people.

You used to be able to go on something like social media and not worry that your governor was going to use what you post on social media against you. But we’re just not in that age anymore. We’re in an age where companies, as well as governments, see everything that we post online. It’s like we should be able to be alerted when those kinds of things are happening and opt in or opt out to our data being shared.

I think it’s been often said we need to watch where we post online. And I just don’t think it should even come to that. I think it should be like a we need to opt into what we want to give out versus what we do not. Privacy should not be at this point of farce. But it feels like it is a farce because we’ve been asked to give up so much of our information to the internet and to governmental entities in order to just get our basic needs met. This is not just a trans issue. It’s an issue of privacy and surveillance, to rights that are continuously being challenged in other ways. See Roe v. Wade, interracial marriage and the many things that are coming out as it pertains to the Supreme Court. I probably would have thought twice about changing my name and gender marker — though I shouldn’t have to — if I knew that that information was just up for grabs for people trying to pass anti-trans laws.

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