Privacy in Telecommunications - A California Perspective

This article focuses on the policy and legal issues that are before state and federal agencies regarding informational privacy in telecommunications. For example, how does one reconcile the interests of, on the one hand, individuals and businesses who believe they have a right to informational privacy and, on the other hand, the demands of business to use this personal information to promote commercial activity and the demands of the public that it have full access to information that affects the public good. The article then examines the state of the law of privacy in California and specifically the California Public Utilities Commission\u27s recent Caller Identification Decision. Finally, the article concludes with a discussion of whether informational privacy is a state issue that should be controlled by a given state\u27s constitution and laws or is a matter to be governed exclusively by the recent Federal Communications Commission Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which suggests that the FCC has the power to preempt conflicting state laws on the issue of informational privacy