Compliance Headaches.

This article presents the author's opinion on the influence of laws on the implementation of information technology (IT) in the U.S. As a correspondent, I covered literally hundreds of congressional hearings and many of them is about privacy. I used to be able to quote key passages from my dog-eared copies of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. And I was naive. I though that the young attorneys drafting the legislation knew what was best for the country. I scoffed at industry complaints about various provisions being too hard to implement. Businesses also feared a hodge of privacy laws across the 50 states, but I was skeptical of arguments for federal preemption of state privacy laws. I know that inconsistent and vague laws can make it tough for IT managers to comply even when they truly want to. The best intentions of attorneys can cause serious headaches for business folks outside the Capital Beltway. I think policy-makers do the best they can when they write the laws. But I have learned that the law of unintended consequences is the most powerful of all.