Ever since she was first elected to the State Legislature in 1992, Debra Bowen has been a pioneer in government reform, consumer protection and privacy rights, environmental conservation, and open government.
Learn more about why Debra Bowen should be California's next Secretary of State.
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| California Ruling a Victory for Privacy, Says Bowen |
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| Government Technology |
| Jul 17, 2006 |
The California State Supreme Court ruled 7-0 yesterday that the privacy rights of Californians are violated when out-of-state callers secretly record their telephone conversations.
"It's a victory for anyone who cares about their privacy," said State Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach), one of the Legislature's leading privacy advocates. "Simply applying the law to calls made within the state would have pulled the rug out from under a fundamental privacy protection Californians have relied on for nearly 40 years."
The case involved a conflict between a 1967 California law requiring callers, regardless of where they called from, to get permission before taping a call with a California resident, and a Georgia law that allows people and companies to record conversations with people without their permission as long as the person doing the taping is a party to the conversation. The California plaintiffs sued Salomon Smith Barney Inc., now Smith Barney Inc., for secretly recording telephone calls between customers in California and their Atlanta-based brokers in 1998.
In its ruling, the court noted: "Many companies who do business in California are national or international firms that have headquarters, administrative offices, or -- in view of the recent trend toward outsourcing -- at least telephone operators located outside of California. If businesses could maintain a regular practice of secretly recording all telephone conversations with their California clients or customers in which the business employee is located outside of California, that practice would represent a significant inroad into the privacy interest that the statute was intended to protect."
"Had the court allowed non-California businesses to skirt the state's telephone privacy statute, it no doubt would have led to a rush of out-of-state businesses clamoring to get around the state's other landmark privacy laws," continued Bowen. "The ability to invade someone's privacy or rip off their identity doesn't stop at the state line and there's no reason why our state law should stop there either. The court hit the mark in its decision to solidify the foundation of one of California's core privacy statues."
Bowen has authored first-in-the-nation privacy laws to prevent businesses from using people's Social Security numbers as public identifies or account numbers and allowed people to freeze access to their credit reports. On four occasions, she authored bills to prohibit businesses from monitoring their employees' e-mail without telling them, but all four of those measures were vetoed.
http://www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=100216
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