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Privacy Bill Being Resurrected Despite High-Profile Failures

The bill would force financial companies to get permission from consumers before selling personal information to outside marketing companies.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Despite two failed attempts to pass financial privacy legislation within the last year, a bill that would require financial companies to get permission before selling personal information is being resurrected by Sen. Jackie Speier.

Speier, a Democrat, said she will reintroduce the measure this month as the Legislature enters the final days of its two-year session. The bill would require financial companies to receive permission before selling personal information, such as bank balances and unlisted phone numbers, to outside marketing companies.

Speier's measure would also let financial conglomerates trade information among sister companies to market products, such as a Bank of America mortgage to a Bank of America credit card customer. But customers would be able to deny permission by sending in a form.

Current law gives banks and insurance companies the ability to sell personal information received from credit or mortgage applications without getting permission from their customers, including phone numbers, bank balances and outstanding bills.

A spokesman for Gov. Gray Davis said the governor is preparing to offer his own amendments to Speier's privacy bill. Davis has said he wants to sign a privacy measure. But the Democratic governor worked behind the scenes with his Assembly allies last year to kill Speier's bill.

He then offered his own version, but that also died when consumer groups and corporations refused to support it.

Consumer groups say the measure probably needs one last push from Davis and Assembly leaders.

"Does the Assembly provide the leadership needed that this gets to the governor's desk?" asked Shelley Curran, a lobbyist with Consumers Union in San Francisco. "Or does the legislation never see the light of day?"

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