Governator Kills Data Protection Law

eweekhickins writes "The Governator has killed a recent data protection law in California, and it won't be back. Using a tried-and-true argument, that the bill would have 'driven up the costs of compliance, particularly for small businesses,' California Governor Arnold Schwartzenneger vetoed what some are calling one of the nation's most stringent proposed e-tail data breach security laws."

Comments

Subscriptions

[mastershake_phd]

But it also outright prohibited much data being stored at all after a purchase is authorized by banning a retailer from storing "sensitive authentication data subsequent to authorization, even if that data is encrypted."
 
What about automatically recurring bills, like web hosting.

Re:Subscriptions

[Attila Dimedici]

It has been a few years (late 90's) since I worked retail. However, I worked for a retailer that for various reasons people forgot that they had purchased things from with their credit card. The customer would get their bill and see a charge from our store on it. They would call the credit card company and contest the charge. The credit card company would send us a letter asking for the signed receipt for charge against Credit card # xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx (where the x's were the number on the card) from such and such date. If we did not send it to them within a given amount of time, they would issue a credit to the customer and charge us the amount that we had received against that card. SO, at that point a retailer did need a copy of the customer's credit card # for at least two months after the purchase.

Too much effort to comply is not an excuse

[ravenspear]

Seems like a lot of companies out there today do not give the proper effort required to make even rudimentary considerations to the security of client data. This reminds me of an experience I had a few weeks ago. This is 100% true. I was sitting in a subway station waiting for a train. I sat down on a bench and noticed a plain unmarked vanilla envelope sitting on the bench next to me. There was no one else around so it was obvious whoever it belonged to had left it. I opened it and discovered it was several pages of customer records for a hotel chain (don't remember which). It had their names, what nights they had stayed, some additional information, and their FULL credit card numbers they had used to pay printed next to the names. I was amazed that someone would just leave this kind of information lying around anywhere for anyone to find.

Re:It can be, if you want any small business

[Opportunist]

C'mon, be sensible. Keeping customer data reasonably safe is quite easy for small businesses. You have your POS with outsourced security (read: You bought some POS system that handles CC purchases for you). Your accounting needn't be on an internet terminal, that's something you do on a computer which can trivially be disconnected from the internet or anything else that could steal your data.

If anyone, large businesses face problems with increased demands in security.

Re:"Governator"? Are we in 6th grade here?

[AuMatar]

Actually, his biggest opponent was Davis. Over 40% of the people voted to NOT recall him. If the courts hadn't made the braindead decision that he couldn't be on the general recall ballot, he probably would have been recalled, then rewon the election.

Re:"Governator"? Are we in 6th grade here?

[TheLink]

I wonder if he gets a speech trainer to help him _keep_ his accent.

After all just imagine what would happen if he loses his accent. Imagine an Arnie movie with Arnie speaking in English but without his accent.