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Personal Information Initiative Enters Circulation

Personally Indentifying Information.
Confidentiality. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.

SACRAMENTO - Secretary of State Debra Bowen today announced that the proponents of a new initiative may begin collecting petition signatures for their measure.

The Attorney General prepares the legal title and summary that is required to appear on initiative petitions. When the official language is complete, the Attorney General forwards it to the proponents and to the Secretary of State, and the initiative may be circulated for signatures. The Secretary of State then provides calendar deadlines to the proponents and to county elections officials. The Attorney General's official title and summary for the measure is as follows:

PERSONALLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION. CONFIDENTIALITY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Creates presumption that an individual's personally identifying information, including financial or health information, is confidential when collected for a commercial or governmental purpose. Requires collector of personally identifying information to use all reasonably available means to protect it from unauthorized disclosure. Creates presumption of harm when personally identifying information is disclosed without the subject’s authorization. Permits disclosure of personally identifying information without authorization if it is publicly available from government records or there is a countervailing compelling interest in disclosure and no other reasonable way to accomplish that interest. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government:Unknown but potentially significant costs to state and local governments from additional or more costly lawsuits, increased court workload, data security improvements, and changes to information-sharing practices. (13-0008.)

The Secretary of State's tracking number for this measure is 1603 and the Attorney General's tracking number is 13-0008.

The proponents for the measure, Steve Peace and Michael Thorsnes, must collect signatures of 807,615 registered voters – the number equal to eight percent of the total votes cast for governor in the 2010 gubernatorial election – in order to qualify it for the ballot. The proponents have 150 days to circulate petitions for the measure, meaning the signatures must be collected by February 24, 2014.

The initiative proponents can be reached at 3499 Heatherwood Drive, El Cajon, California 92109. No phone number was provided.

To sign up for regular ballot measure updates via email, RSS feed, or Twitter, go to www.sos.ca.gov/multimedia.

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