Joe Simitian represents Palo Alto and environs in the California State Senate.

He last appeared on California Politics Today on June 4, 2005, in an article entitled "California State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), spokespersons for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security discuss high-tech ID card issues."

In order to update the situation vis-à-vis SB 682, a bill now pending in the California Legislature by Senator Simitian to limit the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips on state and local identification documents, California Politics Today spoke this afternoon with Senator Simitian about this issue.

During that conversation, Senator Simitian raised the possibility that if the government required everyone to, for example, carry a driver's license equipped with an RFID chip, then the government could monitor just who might attend "an anti-war rally at the University of California" or a "local/lawful gun show," to cite two possible examples. He indicated that either possibility would be "not that good."

Senator Simitian also called upon the RFID industry to consider more thoughtfully the "look-before-you-leap" approach to deploying these chips in state-mandated identification documents that he says is now embodied in the version of SB 682 now pending in the State Assembly Appropriations Committee, where it was sent after being amended and passed by the Assembly Judiciary Committee on June 28, 2005, on a 6-3 vote.

You can listen to the comments of California State Senator Joe Simitian on the subject of SB 682 in their entirety by clicking here.