News Room: 2001-2002 Legislation

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Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Morain writes that the next governor needs to defend a state’s right to protect personal data.

In California, privacy is a fundamental right. This state has a constitutional amendment identifying privacy as inalienable. And for better or worse, legislators don’t see themselves as potted plants. Some actually care about state law. All that means the next governor will grapple with privacy or lack of it right here in Sacramento.

“States often have to lead to get attention at the federal level,” said Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto,  the Legislature’s most prolific author of bills that seek to provide at least a thin veil of privacy. Simitian helped push a first-in-the-nation requirement that companies tell us when a security breach has spewed our personal information into other people’s hands. Because of a 2004 Simitian bill, California requires companies doing business in the state to post privacy policies on their websites. Lately, Simitian has sought to limit the misuse of radio frequency identification. Now Simitian is carrying legislation to protect people who use FasTrak to pay bridge tolls.

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State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) announced today the introduction of Senate Bill 1475 which strengthens the state’s hands-free and anti-texting laws for motorists. read more ...

State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) was recognized today with a 2009 distinguished leadership award by the Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA). The organization recognized Simitian for his work in the legislature dating back to 2001, when he became one of the first legislators to pass design-build laws for public agencies, focusing on K-12 school districts. read more ...

Long before cellphones became common, industry pioneers were aware of the risks of multitasking behind the wheel. read more ...

Sacramento – The California State Senate approved today SB 20, legislation by State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), which aims to strengthen existing privacy protection laws for California consumers. The new law builds on legislation authored by Simitian in 2002 that requires a business or government agency that incurs a data breach to provide notice to the individual(s) whose information was compromised. More than 40 states have adopted similar legislation since that time, largely based on the California measure. read more ...

Six years after California enacted the country's first data breach notification law, many state residents have received letters warning them that their data was exposed by a breach but usually they don't know how or how long, experts said at a privacy conference on Friday. That would change with the passage of a measure proposed by California State Sen. Joe Simitian, who authored the country's first bill requiring companies to notify customers when a breach has occurred that exposes their data. Senate Bill 20 would require that notification letters to consumers have a standard set of information such as information about the timing and circumstances of the breach. read more ...