Remember all those privacy laws you thought you had to comply with - laws ranging from the Fair Credit Reporting Act to health privacy laws to California's Beverly-Song law that prohibits the collection of personal information during a credit-card transaction? Well, a U.S. Supreme Court decision June 23 could be read to mean that all of these laws are unconstitutional and that the government may be without the ability to pass any of them.
This might return us to the "Wild West" days of selling personal information to anyone for any reason, writes law columnist Mark Rasch. Then again, it may not. But for now, at least, the case will provide something of a backstop legal defense to retailers that use personal information for marketing purposes when someone has not explicitly given their permission.
