California could soon become one of the first states to create comprehensive safeguards for personal information collected through the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging in government-issued documents and identification cards.
The state legislature last month passed legislation, called the Identity Information Protection Act of 2006, to protect residents from RFID abuses. The law is expected to be signed or vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by the end of the month.
State Sen. Joe Simitian, who sponsored the bill, said that governments must tread carefully in forcing such technologies onto the public.
"The question we have to ask and answer is, Do we really want state and local governments to issue documents that can broadcast our personal information without our knowledge or consent?" Simitian said.
He noted that the measure would prevent both government and criminal abuse of information stored on RFID tags.
Source: rfidglobal
