This op-ed originally appeared in the Reno Gazette Journal on December 7, 2025. 

When Nevada’s state gov­ern­ment fell vic­tim to a ransom­ware attack in August, the con­sequences were severe. Agen­cies were forced to shut down phone lines, web­sites and inper­son ser­vices as offi­cials scrambled to secure their net­works and invest­ig­ate what had been stolen. Last month, the state issued its final report recount­ing its extens­ive efforts to bring ser­vices back online and recover lost data.

The epis­ode offers les­sons for all state and local gov­ern­ments. Crim­in­als and for­eign adversar­ies tar­get gov­ern­ment web­sites to wreak havoc on pub­lic ser­vices and steal per­sonal inform­a­tion. State agen­cies ware­house large amounts of data that can reveal sens­it­ive inform­a­tion about our health, fin­ances and even beliefs.

While col­lect­ing some of this data is unavoid­able, one way to limit the risk of cyber­at­tacks is to cut back on how much per­sonal inform­a­tion is col­lec­ted and stored by the gov­ern­ment in the first place. Nevada took action on this front earlier in the year by passing legis­la­tion to pro­hibit state agen­cies from demand­ing identi­fy­ing inform­a­tion about a non­profit’s mem­bers, donors and volun­teers except where required by cur­rent law.

Des­pite today’s polar­ized polit­ical atmo­sphere, that law, Assembly Bill 197, passed with over­whelm­ing bipar­tisan sup­port. Demo­crats and Repub­lic­ans alike recog­nize the import­ant role that private dona­tions play in fund­ing the causes they care about. Co-sponsored by Demo­cratic Assemb­ly­wo­man Shea Backus and Repub­lican Assembly­man Greg Hafen, AB 197 passed 41-1 in the Assembly and 21-0 in the Sen­ate on the way to being signed into law by Gov. Joe Lom­bardo.

The law also earned sup­port from an incred­ibly diverse group of non­profits, includ­ing organ­iz­a­tions on oppos­ite sides of some of the day’s most con­tro­ver­sial issues. Most strik­ing, AB 197 was sup­por­ted by both Nevada Right to Life and Planned Par­ent­hood Votes Nevada. It also garnered sup­port from LGBTQ+ rights organ­iz­a­tion Sil­ver State Equal­ity, the socially con­ser­vat­ive Eagle Fo

rum, the liber­tarian con­ser­vat­ive non­profit Amer­ic­ans for Prosper­ity-Nevada, and the pro­gress­ive organ­iz­a­tion Battle Born Pro­gress.

Another bill that passed this year, AB 497, fur­ther improved Nevadans’ data pri­vacy by mak­ing long-needed updates to the state’s cam­paign fin­ance laws. The law ensures cit­izen groups and non­profits are not improp­erly clas­si­fied as polit­ical com­mit­tees and wrongly forced to expose their sup­port­ers. Intro­duced by Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas), that bill passed the Assembly unan­im­ously.

While there is no sub­sti­tute for good data secur­ity, states can lighten their load and give cit­izens some piece of mind by cut­ting back on what they col­lect. AB 197 and AB 497 are great examples of how this can be done. Going for­ward, Nevada is much bet­ter posi­tioned to safe­guard every res­id­ent’s fun­da­mental right to pri­vacy when sup­port­ing causes they believe in.

These reforms can help peace­ful cit­izens fight back against dox­ing, can­cel cul­ture and even polit­ical viol­ence. Since 2018, 21 other states have passed laws sim­ilar to AB 197 with these goals in mind. In the wake of recent viol­ence in Min­nesota and Pennsylvania, many states have even taken ini­tial steps to shield the home addresses of state and local elec­ted offi­cials.

Nevada’s reforms demon­strate that we can draw a smarter line between data that should be col­lec­ted, data that should be pub­licly dis­closed and data that should be left with its right­ful owner. As offi­cials close the book on this cyber­at­tack, they should remem­ber that the best way to pro­tect Nevadans from future breaches is not simply to guard their data more closely, but to stop demand­ing it when it isn’t truly needed.

Heather Lauer is the CEO of People United for Pri­vacy Found­a­tion, a non­profit that defends the First Amend­ment rights of all Amer­ic­ans, regard­less of their beliefs, to come together in sup­port of their shared val­ues.