California State Senator Joe Simitian has found a way to get his RFID bill ("Identity Information Protection Act") to the Senate floor after it was held in Appropriations.  A different bill, also authored by Simitian, SB 768, which addressed marine finfish aquaculture and which had already been approved to go to the Senate floor, was completely gutted and the text replaced with his RFID legislation (SB 682).  This change was approved by the Senate on 2 September 2005.

Opposition to the bill continues.  According to the coalition of groups that object to the bill targeting a single technology (rather than encompassing all technologies), Simitian's bill "embraces false fears and misrepresentations of fact to impose a ban against a technology proven both secure and reliable." The objection is that the bill targets the technology rather than addressing real privacy and security issues.

An analogous situation would be to ban automobiles because some people drive drunk.  The coalition members are pushing to have illegal behavior punished, not the technology.

Although the bill does include a provision to criminalize "skimming" or illegal reading of information from an RFID-enabled document, it had previously been suggested elsewhere that "skimming" be added to existing Federal anti-wiretapping legislation.  Such legislation would be more universal and enforceable.  Additionally, adequate wording already exists in Federal legislation and would only require the addition of RFID.

The current wording of SB 768 can be found here.