I hearken back to the results of telecommunications deregulation begun 15 years ago. The fallout from that process has been confusion and fraud. The marketplace must be allowed to mature before opt out can provide adequate consumer safeguards. Besides, we are not living in a time of scarcity of information. There has been a lot of discussion recently of the New Economy that is emerging now, fueled by the Internet.
Information is abundant.
The three merged industries have ample opportunities now to tell consumers about the customized services and one-stop shopping benefits of combining their data. Let consumers use this information to decide for themselves that they want their personal information used in a merged industry environment. Again, let' s give this radical new marketplace time to mature before putting an opt-out model into place. After al, we are not saying that information sharing should be outlawed. On the contrary, nothing in AB 1707 prevents information sharing among the three merged industries.