SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Democratic lawmakers pushed through a bill in California that would make platforms like eBay and Nextdoor collect bank account and tax ID numbers from high-volume sellers who advertise online but collect payments offline. It was voted on Tuesday by committees.
The idea is that robbers will be less likely to sell stolen goods again if the police can find them.
These bills are part of a larger group of 14 meant to stop store theft in the state. The California Retailers Association says the problem has become so bad that it’s a crisis, but it’s hard to say how bad it is because many shops don’t share their data.
If voters pass a tough-on-crime initiative, the plan would not be valid. The initiative was approved for the November ballot on Tuesday, but the Secretary of State still needs to sign it off this month.
Supporters of the data collection plan, such as some big box stores and district attorneys, said it would stop organized crime groups from reselling stolen goods and close a legal loophole that doesn’t require platforms to keep track of offline transactions.
Sellers who make at least $5,000 in earnings and do at least 200 deals a year would have to follow the rules in the bill.
People who are against the measure say that the new requirement is so broad and unclear that some platforms would have to start collecting private information from all users, which would hurt California’s online stores.
“This is going to basically push businesses out of California,” said David Edmonson, who works for the tech advocacy group TechNet. “I think most sellers will have to give that information a lot of thought before they decide to give it to the online market just to be able to sell, you know, household items.”
Nathan Garnett, general counsel of OfferUp, a mobile marketplace that brings together local buyers and sellers so that deals can be made in person, said that the plan would help big box stores a lot while making it impossible for classified ad sites to do business in the state.
Garnett said that before 11 million OfferUp users in California could list something on the site, like a used coffee table or an old truck, they would have to give their personal information.
People who are against the measure also say it goes against a federal law that went into effect in July of last year. That law says that online marketplaces like Amazon have to check out high-volume sellers on their sites in order to cut down on the amount of stolen goods that are sold online after being stolen from stores.
The federal law was made to protect secret websites, and Carl Szabo, the head lawyer of the Internet trade group NetChoice, said there was no legal way around it. The group, which is made up of companies like Facebook parent company Meta and Etsy, sued Georgia last week to stop the implementation of a state law that would have set similar standards.
Szabo said sites can’t keep an eye on all transactions, even ones that don’t happen online.
The bill’s author, Democratic California state Sen. Nancy Skinner, said that police need the tool to go after professional dealer schemes. She used the example of a couple in San Diego who made about $8 million by selling stolen goods online. Online marketplaces already get information from users because they make them agree to a privacy policy before they can use the site, she said.
“High-volume sellers would be the only ones they would need to get that information from,” she said. “Not ALL of their site users.”
The plan is part of a larger set of laws that would, among other things, make it easier to prosecute auto thefts, make drug court programs bigger, and raise the penalties for organized crime rings.
Lawmakers are rushing to get the bills to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is a Democrat, in a few weeks. The bills would go into action right away after being signed. This is part of a new “tough on crime” strategy meant to calm voters’ growing fears while keeping progressive policies in place that are meant to keep people out of jail.
Source: AP News
