That didn't take long.
The Bee's editorial board called today for the Legislature to clarify whether a consumer privacy law covers online purchases after a California Supreme Court ruling on Monday said it didn't.
This morning, Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, chairman of the Assembly Committee on Banking and Finance, said he plans to introduce such a measure this month.
"In today's high-tech world, the privacy of online consumers is continually susceptible to being violated," Dickinson, a Sacramento Democrat, said in a statement. "The court's decision will further impair the privacy of online consumers. I plan to introduce legislation this month that would increase consumer privacy while also ensuring appropriate fraud and identity theft protection. We must better protect consumers' privacy by safeguarding against the exploitation of personal information."
The consumer protection law, passed in 1990, says that retailers can't require personal information such as home address and phone number from customers using credit cards. In the split decision, the high court said the law applied to only "brick-and-mortar" stores and didn't extend to credit card purchases on the Internet, in part because online retailers can't check photo IDs.
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