Like Australia, the debate in California has been about how privacy protections can be built into RFID-enabled identity systems.

In Australia that debate has focused on the Federal Government’s proposed Access Card, while lawmakers in California are seeking to put protections in place to cover a range of IDs, from student ID at schools to state driver’s licences.

It has been a testy debate in the Sacramento legislature. Legislation that was approved by lawmakers last year – and similar to what is now being proposed – was torpedoed by a Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger veto last October.

This time around, the provisions seeking to regulate RFID-enabled documents have been split into five separate bills, giving more moderate measures a better chance of making it into law.

Two of the bills seek to put a three-year moratorium on the use of RFID chips in either driver’s licences or school ID cards. Others create stop-gap privacy protections for RFID-based cards already used by Government, and make it a crime for unauthorised skimming of personal data from the card.

The last bill makes it illegal for companies to try to take the extreme measure of having employees implanted with an RFID chip.

It is not yet clear what attitude Governor Schwarzenegger will take to the bills, or whether he intends vetoing any or all of them – although it is thought he wants to keep open State options for using RFID chips in government IDs.

In Australia, Federal legislators have not sought to pass laws governing all possible government RFID-enabled documents.

The enabling legislation for the $1 billion Access Card project did not adequately provide protections for citizens and has been withdrawn for a re-write by Government.

The Australian Privacy Foundation has already rejected as inadequate the industry code of practice self-regulation proposals put forward by the product ID organisation GS1.