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Legislative Watch 
LEGISLATIVE
1/6/06-Attorney General Mike Hatch, Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, and Rep. Jim Davnie, DFL-Minneapolis, want the state to stop selling the private driver’s license information of its residents.
The three called upon the Legislature to order the Minnesota Department of Public Safety to quit selling the information to commercial companies. In addition, they announced a proposal that would restrict the commercial distribution of driver’s license information.
Under the proposal, the DPS would be prohibited from distributing driver’s license data in bulk quantity – unless it was to a government agency – without the express written consent of the license holder.
In particular, the trio was concerned about the sale of license information – including name, address, height, weight and license number – to private companies and Web sites.
In 1997, the federal government banned states from selling driver’s data, but a federal judge overturned that law in 1998, ruling that federal law could not determine how states classify their own data.
