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Nevada Businesses Must Start Encrypting E-Mail By Oct. 1st
dtothes writes "Baseline is reporting the state of Nevada has a statute about to go in effect on October 1, 2008 that will force businesses to encrypt all personally identifiable information transmitted over the Internet. They speak with a Nevada legal expert who says the problem is that the statute is written so broadly that the law could potentially open up a ton of unintentional liability and allow for the interpretation of things like password-protected documents to be considered sufficiently encrypted. Quoting: 'Beyond the infrastructure impact, the statute itself looks like Swiss cheese. Bryce K. Earl, a Las Vegas-based attorney, ... has been following the issue closely and believes there are some problems with the statute as it is on the books right now, namely the broad definition of encryption, the lack of coordination with industry standards and the unclear nature of penalties both criminal and civil.'"
Let's say you're a guy with a lawn mowing business and you have your web site (which you crudely built yourself) printed on the side of your truck.
Now, someone emails you with their name and address asking for a quote.
Good luck trying to figure out what this law (http://www.leg.state.nv.us/Nrs/NRS-597.html) means!
p.s. seems to me that the lawyer who wrote this article ought to know the difference between "affect" and "effect"...
"Think about all the hotels, resorts, golf courses, pawn shops, nightclubs, check cashing, ski lodges and small businesses this is going to effect."
If you're an ecommerce website, and you don't already use https for sensitive data (like credit card info), you are just begging to be ripped off. Or hadn't you noticed that little padlock icon that appears whenever you buy something online?