This year, makers of the Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari Web browsers have all made tools within their browsers that let users indicate they don’t want to be tracked. But tracking companies aren’t required to honour those messages. Both Facebook and Google fighting two online-privacy bills that are moving through the California legislature. Both bills were approved by the Judiciary Committee, but they face strong opposition from some big players in the state. Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are among dozens of companies and trade groups opposing at least one of the bills.

One of the bills, a “do not track” proposal introduced by State Sen. Alan Lowenthal, would require companies to let people opt out of having their online data collected. The other, by State Sen. Ellen Corbett, would require social-networking sites to keep users’ information private by default and to remove personally identifying information if requested.

The bills are evidence of growing interest in privacy legislation, which is also being debated at the federal level. Last month, Sens. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and John McCain (R., Ariz.) proposed legislation that would create a “privacy bill of rights” that would let people block information from being shared and access personally identifiable information about themselves.

The California bills are the latest in a series of moves by the state to confront privacy concerns more aggressively than the federal government has thus far. The state already allows residents to get access to some of the data companies have on them, for example.

Privacy advocates have praised the general intent of the California bills – giving consumers more access to their information and more control over it. But even supporters of the ideas have said there are a few problems. The bill from Sen. Corbett, for example, would allow parents to request the removal of a child’s personally identifiable information as long as the child was under 18. Proving that someone is a child’s parent or guardian would be extremely difficult, and removing teens’ information would be problematic, Mr. Brookman argues that teenagers would therefore actually have First Amendment rights.

Finally. as with other Internet privacy legislation, there’s always the question of whether state law will offend the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which among other things prevents states from putting an undue burden on interstate commerce. Committee analysis of both bills argues that the burdens are minimal and outweighed by the benefits, but opponents disagree.

How the U.S. treats privacy continues to attact worldwide attention. U.S. President Barack Obama has signed into law bipartisan legislation which will protect authors and journalists from libel lawsuits filed abroad. The Act “ Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage” (SPEECH) prohibits US courts from enforcing foreign libel judgments against US defendants that are inconsistent with First Amendment rules which protect free speech in the country. It intends to curb libel tourism, or the practice of filing lawsuits in countries with harsh libel laws. The legislation is being viewed as specifically aimed at insulating American journalists, authors and academicians from Britian’s restrictive libel laws.