Is Sacramento the world’s capital of Internet privacy regulation?

Paul Schwartz, Deirdre Mulligan, Chris Hoofnagle quoted in Forbes TECH blog, January 6, 2014
Paul [Schwartz] explained that the state-federal dialogue has broken down because the current Congress is gridlocked. Meanwhile, California continues enacting “a tidal wave of California privacy laws.” He cautioned against waiting for a “federal Godot,” i.e., expecting Congress to reengage productively on privacy regulation.

Deirdre Mulligan … praised California’s long reputation for privacy leadership. She said regulators outside California look to California as a laboratory of experimentation, and those experiments have ripple effects across the globe.

Chris Hoofnagle … said notice-and-choice is based on rational choice theory, but consumers don’t always act rationally…. He believes consumers see the words “privacy policies” as seals, i.e., certifications of minimum protections. He favors correcting this by establishing minimum substantive legal standards for anyone who uses the term “privacy policy.”