With the exception of that stunningly frank statement made by a Senator yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee work session on security breach legislation (SB 134/SB 486) went pretty well for business. The bills would require strict standards for how businesses dispose of personal information and mandate notice to individuals when personal information was divulged through a security breach. We detailed the Chamber’s position on the bill here.

The Senate work group conceptually agreed to narrow what was considered personal information, limit the bill to computerized data, provide a more manageable basis for notification following a security breach, and eliminate individual lawsuits to enforce the bill.

Unfortunately, the work group resisted efforts to extend the bill’s provisions to state and local governments, resulting in the quote in the above headline. The sponsor indicated that including governments in the bill would jeopardize the legislation, because its requirements would be “costly” and “inconvenient” for state and local governments to administer. Guinea pigs take note.