Legislature(2007 - 2008)BELTZ 211
03/13/2008 01:30 PM Senate LABOR & COMMERCE
| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| SB160 | |
| SB293 | |
| HB65 | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| += | HB 65 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| = | SB 293 | ||
| = | SB 160 | ||
SB 293-ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION DEVICES
1:37:31 PM
CHAIR ELLIS announced SB 293 to be up for consideration.
TREVOR FULTON, staff to Senator McGuire, sponsor of SB 293,
recapped that this is a consumer protection bill protecting
personal privacy and preventing theft of personal identity. The
state currently doesn't have any regulation on the books and
this brings state statutes up to date with this growing
technology.
CHAIR ELLIS asked him to explain the concerns that were
expressed since the last hearing.
1:38:51 PM
SENATOR BUNDE joined the committee.
MR. FULTON responded that the proposed CS addressed some of
those concerns. In response to Senator Bunde's question whether
SB 293 was a proactive bill or addressed current problem, he
reported that Ed Sniffen, Assistant Attorney General, said
identity theft as a result of radio frequency identification
(RFID) would be difficult to prove, but he thought it had
probably already happened. Senator Bunde's second concern was
how SB 293 would affect the use of federal documents like
passports. Mr. Fulton said Legal Services decided it wouldn't
affect federal regulations regarding those types of documents,
but the CS excludes passports and other government-issue travel
documents.
A third question came up through public testimony about whether
similar laws exist in other states. The short answer is no, but
RFID has only been on the public radar for the last three years.
It surfaced in 2005 and since then 50 pieces of legislation have
been introduced in 27 states about it.
SENATOR BUNDE said that addressed his concerns.
SENATOR ELLIS asked Mr. Fulton to go through the CS.
1:41:55 PM
MR. FULTON said that after discussions with the Attorney
General's office, the bill drafter, the Electronic Privacy
Information Center and Dr. Oliver Hedgecut, Professor of
Logistics at UAA, the sponsor decided to incorporate the
following changes into the draft CS. The first change is in the
title that adds violations of this act to a long list of unfair
trade practices already in statute.
The second change is on page 1, line 7, and deletes "active"
that was used in the RFID industry as a very specific term to
differentiate between an active RFID device and a passive one.
It wasn't used in that sense and they didn't want to cause
confusion so it was deleted. The third change is on page 1, line
10, and a couple of other places and replaces "universally
accepted symbol" with "industry recognized symbol". The
reasoning is there is no "universally acceptable symbol" out
there and several different industries use the symbols
differently. They also wanted to accommodate those who are
already willingly labeling their products with some sort of RFID
symbol.
On page 2, lines 16-31, a paragraph was deleted that required
consumers to pay costs associated with the deactivation of RFID.
It was thought putting that burden on the consumer's shoulders
was unreasonable. A new paragraph says "a provider must delete
any personal information on a reactivated RFID." They didn't
want to discourage reuse of the devices, but personal
information had to be purged first.
The fifth change was on page 3, line 1, that replaced "coerce"
and "coercion" with "require" and "requirement". "Coercion" is a
stronger term and more open to interpretation, which could make
proving a violation of this section more difficult. On page 3,
lines 15-16, "remote" was deleted because it is superfluous; all
RFID devices scan and read remotely.
On page 4, lines 12-14, the "Enforcement" section was deleted
because when this was added to the Unfair Trade Practices Act,
there was no longer any need to specifically identify
enforcement procedures. A new section was added in its place
entitled "Exemption" which is where passports and other
international travel documents were exempted. On page 4, lines
16-18, the definition of "active" was deleted and definitions
for "activate" and "activated" were inserted.
1:47:48 PM
This next section had the most substantive change, Mr. Fulton
said. On page 4, lines 28-29, "that transmits, receives or
stores personal information" was added after "item". This
language narrows the focus of the bill only to RFID devices that
transmit, receive or store personal information. "Personal
information" is defined to include the types of items that
consumers tend to be most sensitive about (listed on page 5).
They didn't want to unnecessarily burden all the other
industries, particularly supply chain management and retail
industries that use RFIDs quite a bit.
The final change in the CS is on page 6, lines 2-3, where a new
section was inserted entitled "Section 2" that adds this act to
the list of Unfair Trade Practices.
1:49:07 PM
CHAIR ELLIS asked if all concerns had been addressed.
MR. FULTON replied yes.
DR. OLIVER HEDGECUT, Professor of Logistics, University of
Alaska Anchorage, supported SB 160. He stated that Alaska does
lead in this area and started its RFID research at UAA with the
military. "For that very reason we are a good Petrie dish to
experiment with, not only technology, but with laws and I'm very
proud to be Alaskan and see that we are talking about this
today." He approved of the suggested changes.
ED SNIFFEN, Assistant Attorney General, said making data
protection and privacy a violation of the Consumer Protection
Act was a good move.
SENATOR ELLIS said he supported narrowing the bill to personal
privacy.
1:52:37 PM
SENATOR STEVENS moved to adopt CSSB 293(L&C), version 25-
LS1509\C. There were no objections and it was so ordered.
1:53:02 PM
SENATOR STEVENS moved to report CSSB 293(L&C) from committee
with individual recommendations and attached fiscal notes. There
were no objections and it was so ordered.
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