Senator tackles spam and RFID

Isn't there a danger of restricting the development of this technology at such an early stage and perhaps squashing the potential benefits?
I don't think so. I think that what we want to do is guide development in a way that's positive overall for society. It's not good for anyone to spend lots of money to develop and apply a technology in a way that causes a consumer revolt.

With the rise of new technologies -- the Internet, data mining, RFID -- how much privacy are we as a society giving up? Where is all this headed from your perspective, and what's at stake?
Well, that's the $64m question. And what gives people the greatest concern is the notion that our privacy is at stake -- that we are losing control over our personal information. That feeling is what I believe drove the passage of Senate Bill 1 in California, which gives people the right to make decisions about who gets access to their financial information.

When we take that beyond the realm of financial information and start collecting information about geographic whereabouts and so forth, the stakes are magnified and there is a great reason for people to engage in the discussion.

California is totally consumed by the recall election. And yet the high-tech industry has remained virtually silent about it. To what do you attribute high-tech's new political quiescence? Is it specific to the recall, or do you expect more of the same with the presidential election?
I don't imagine that the high-tech industry will be silent on the presidential election. The recall is an interesting thing. California does have a constitutional right for people to conduct a recall. While it's hard to argue that it's grassroots-driven, at this point, people are looking forward to making a choice and having a discussion about policy issues. The state of the California economy will be one of the major issues, and I expect that the tech industry will weigh in on that.

What got you so interested in high-technology?
I'm the daughter of engineers and granddaughter of engineers. If I hadn't been prohibited from taking a drafting class in high school, I might perhaps be an engineer instead of a legislator. So, I'm indulging my streak of geek, I suppose you could say.

You're a fan of sci-fi writers William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. How has that influenced your views as a policy-maker?
Both gentlemen have spent a lot of time thinking about where technology might go and what kind of a society we might see as a result of changes in technology. Their works have been very influential to me, as I start really speaking about what's likely to happen. Over the course of the time that I've worked on technology issues and read Stephenson and Gibson and other such writers, some things I read as science fiction in 1994 are now reality.

Such as?
"Snow Crash," one of Stephenson's first books, dealt with massive computer viruses, and just this week, we've been struggling with computer viruses. I'm told that Air Canada did all of its check-ins manually most of last week. There are numerous examples. It just goes into my own personal mental database of what's happening with technology.

I have to say, these technology issues are the most challenging and fun that any legislator could tackle, because they're new. They all involve issues that no one ever thought about before, because the capability to do things like identify every single package of razor blades and know where they go just didn't exist.