It’s None of Their Business
Given a choice, what consumer would pass out his or her personal financial history to company after company, inviting them to dig for marketing opportunities, or worse?
Unfortunately, that’s the way this supposedly private information is handled these days. Get a home loan or open a bank account and watch helplessly as the information you provided is sold off to insurers, furniture companies, investment “counselors.”
Members of the California Assembly can stop some of these outrageous abuses by voting today for Senate Bill 773, a measure by Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) that would require financial companies to obtain consumers’ permission before sharing personal data with “nonaffiliated” companies or selling this information to such companies.
On Wednesday, Speier agreed to amend the bill to satisfy business concerns without harming consumers. For example, an earlier version of the legislation would have required auto insurers to obtain consumer permission even before switching a customer from a high-risk group to a low-risk group. Speier agreed to let insurers make such changes on their own.
The concessions satisfied many moderate Republicans and Democrats attentive to business concerns. For example, Assemblyman Rod Pacheco (R-Riverside), who opposed the Speier bill last year, has co-authored this year’s version. The bill has also been embraced by other former opponents, such as American Express and lobbyists representing the state’s credit unions.
However, as of Wednesday night, banks, Internet brokers, insurers and other large commercial interests were still furiously lobbying to kill the bill by pressing legislators to vote against it or just not vote at all, and by trying to tack on a last-minute amendment that would gut it. Their amendment would, among other things, let a health insurer share what it knew about you with life insurers.
If that amendment kills the bill, or Gov. Gray Davis vetoes it, a similar measure will no doubt end up on a statewide ballot. Voters would be forced to do for themselves what elected officials, cowed by business contributions, failed so cravenly to do on their behalf.
The legislation’s fate could lie in the hands of several Democrats who declined even to vote on the bill last year and who said they were “neutral” as of Wednesday night. The names of a few key Assembly members from Southern California are listed below. Call to let them know why they should support Speier’s sensible effort to rein in invasions of basic consumer privacy.
*
To Take Action: All numbers are in the 916 area code: Tony Cardenas (D-Panorama City), 319-2039; Lou Correa (D-Anaheim), 319-2069; Edward Chavez (D-La Puente), 319-2057; Dario Frommer (D-Los Feliz), 319-2043.
