The Identity Information Protection Act of 2006 (SB 768), which would have introduced privacy laws to safeguard personal data stored on radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in government-issued documents and identification cards, was vetoed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last week.
The bill was designed to safeguard against either criminal or government abuse of RFID tags by mandating the use of privacy-protecting technologies such as encryption. The bill would also have given Californians the right to decide who can access their personal information stored on RFID cards in documents such as driver's licenses and library cards, as reported by John Leyden of the San Francisco Independent Media Center,
"I am concerned that the bill's provisions are over-broad and may unduly burden the numerous beneficial new applications of contactless technology," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
The rejection of the bill, passed by California's Senate in September, is a set-back for privacy activists such as the American Civil Liberties Union who hoped the bill might provide a framework for hoped-for federal legislation on the issue.
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