NJ's Strong Privacy Law
Apparently, I woke up on the right side of the bed, and am just handing out kudos left and right today.
Consumers will gain strong new protections when New Jersey’s Identity Theft Prevention Act takes effect Jan. 1, but businesses and institutions are facing headaches and added expenses.
Social Security numbers will be out as all-purpose identification numbers, forcing businesses, colleges, unions, insurance companies, police departments and other public agencies to purge files and shred documents.
Those maintaining computer databases will be required to act quickly and publicly in case of security breaches under the new law – among the strongest in the nation.
See “Shredding identity theft” in the North Jersey News. The article does a fairly good job of addressing the costs. I’d like to see more about how this is transferring costs back from consumers to the businesses that put them at risk, but I’m happy to see improvements.
Via Chris Hoofnagle, who also points to a great table of security freeze and notification laws at New Jersey PIRG.
The National Conference of State Legislatures also has an excellent list:
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/lis/CIP/priv/breach.htm