Our Privacy Pays the Price When State Legislators Sell Out

If you have the creepy feeling that your life is not your own, it isn’t because you’re going nuts.

Banking, credit card and insurance companies have thrown millions of dollars at California lawmakers in the past few years, preserving the right to stalk you at every turn.

Telemarketers harass you. Mail solicitations bury you. Countless strangers know your name, your phone number, your income and your spending habits.

As many as 90% of Californians are fed up with this invasion, according to surveys. And yet on Tuesday, the state Legislature stepped up to the plate with a chance to protect our privacy, and whiffed again.

Your dog probably doesn’t roll over as often as legislators have on this issue. When the Assembly Banking Committee snuffed the bill by Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough), it marked four years of legislative bowing to the banking barons.

This is great news for anyone who feels loved when the phone rings incessantly in the middle of dinner, or who opens the mail each day, turns to a spouse and says, “You know what, dear? We’re just not getting enough credit card solicitations.”

Speier’s bill would have required written permission before a company peddles your personal information. It could be reconsidered next week, but heroes are hard to find these days in Sacramento, so don’t hold your breath.

“This means the power of that lobby is huge,” said Jamie Court of the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Protection.

The bill didn’t just lose, Court noted. By getting only 3 of the 12 committee votes, it was torn up, thrown on the floor and spat upon.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Court. “This shows why we’re lucky to have the initiative process in California, where corporateering controls the Capitol in body, sprit and mind.”

Chris Larsen, backer of a ballot initiative that would do for privacy what the inept Legislature won’t, says he’s getting 10,000 signatures a day. Tuesday’s collapse by the Assembly Banking Committee can only put a booster on that rocket. Go to www.californiaprivacy.org to find out more about the initiative.

The California Bankers Assn. put out a statement Tuesday saying how much it cared about consumers, and how committed it was to reasonable legislation, yadda yadda yadda yadda. But this bill would have “detrimentally affected the information economy” and made it more difficult to “keep consumer costs low and customer services high.”

Allow me to translate:

“There’s a reason we spent $20 million on lobbying and campaign contributions to blow this baby out of the water. The profit margin on peddling details about your private life, and endlessly bombarding you with annoying sales pitches, is so unbelievably gargantuan, we in the financial services industry are literally unable to look at each other without breaking out in laughter.”

In anticipation of the Legislature’s cave-in, I met with Court last week to talk about his support of the privacy bill and his new book, “Corporateering: How Corporate Power Steals Your Personal Freedom -- And What You Can Do About It.”

Court had written an op-ed piece for The Times, explaining how he bought Gov. Gray Davis’ Social Security number online for $26. For another $90, Court told me, he could have bought his home address, phone number, the names of his neighbors and a slew of other information.

For $295, he could have snooped at the governor’s -- or anyone else’s -- bank account.

Privacy is no match against the powers of corporate merchandising, Court says. His book is a screed against the impact of mergers, deregulation, campaign contributions and lobbying influence.

Corporations don’t just manufacture money, he argues. More than ever before they dictate health care and energy policy, they control the arts and ideas we’re exposed to, they redefine the rules of law and ethics, and they have made purchasing power the absolute standard of human achievement.

It’s the age of commerce over culture, says Court, which is why medical records are sold without our knowledge, we get 3.5 billion credit card applications annually, and every purchase we make can be tracked by someone who sells the information on the open market.

Maybe there’s some material here for one of those insipid MasterCard ads.

Cost of a legislator? $150,000.

Cost of killing a bill? $20 million.

Cost of a mention in this column? Priceless.

There are some things money can’t buy, but you won’t find one in Sacramento.

*

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.