California's State Senate Judiciary Committee has passed a bill to protect the privacy of Californians' reading habits, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Reader Privacy Act of 2011, SB 602, would require the government and other third parties to obtain a search warrant or court order to access sensitive reading records. The law would cover both e-books and hard copies. The bill, introduced by California Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), aims to protect the "detailed portrait" potentially gleaned by viewing what a person has borrowed from libraries, browsed on digital book service sites or purchased from bookstores. The bill next goes to the State Senate Appropriations Committee.
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