Calif. Gov Terminates RFID ID Bill

In vetoing the bill, Schwarzenegger said it could "inhibit various state agencies from procuring technology that could enhance and streamline operations, reduce expenses and improve customer service to the public, and may unnecessarily restrict state agencies."

Roxanne Gould, a senior vice president of government and public affairs for the American Electronics Association (AEA) and a spokesperson for the High-Tech Trust Coalition, said she anticipates that Sen. Simitian will reintroduce the bill in January. The coalition levied strong opposition against earlier versions of the bill, but removed its opposition to the final bill. Gould says the bill "gives us [the High-Tech Trust Coalition] more time to really look through the bill that was sent to the governor and see what further refinements need to be made before it's reintroduced."

"We need to talk to the governor's office and get some more perspective on why he vetoed the bill," says Simitian, "and talk to folks in the [RFID] industry. We worked with representatives from the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) and the AEA to try to craft a bill they could live with," he adds, "but apparently, that wasn't enough."

While both the ITAA and the AEA removed or neutralized their opposition to the bill before it was sent to the governor, not all industry groups followed suit. The Security Industry Association (SIA), based in Alexandria, Virginia, asked Schwarzenegger to veto the bill. The group supported the bill's call for a comprehensive study by the California Research Bureau, but opposed its call for interim protocols regarding how RFID would be deployed during the study period. The SIA felt the interim rules would make it more difficult for law-enforcement officials to protect Californians, because they would require state agencies to make public the location of all RFID readers and hamper the ability of those agencies to reveal the location of some individuals to emergency first-responder units.

Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a privacy-rights advocacy group supporting SB 768, said the EFF and the other bill sponsors "worked hard to address industry concerns over the life of the bill." He thinks the withdrawal of opposition from the AEA was significant in that it showed both sides of the issue were committed to a compromise. "You can't satisfy everyone," he says. "We gave up things that we would have preferred not to give up—but at the same time, there was an understanding that there are security and privacy issued raised by RFID, and both sides are making an effort to take positive steps to address them."

As for whether the bill's sponsors should revise the bill before submitting it next year, Tien says he's not sure its language is the reason it didn't pass. "I think there was some misunderstandings on what the bill would do," he states.