A Washington state lawmaker has introduced an “Electronic Bill of Rights” that would put significant restrictions on the use of RFID in an effort to protect consumer privacy.

The proposed bill would outlaw the collection, storage, and disclosure of information gathered through radio frequency identification technology without notifying consumers. The bill states that all companies using active and passive RFID devices would have to either disable the devices or gain consumer consent.

The measure would prohibit companies from mandating that consumers have RFID tags for service or refunds. It would also prohibit people and companies from scanning or reading the devices to identify consumers without first obtaining consent.

It would also require that companies using information from RFID would have to follow some yet-to-be-defined industry standards to secure information.

Potential penalties are severe: up to $10,000 in civil penalties for each violation, and triple the total in some cases.

The bill’s author, representative Jeff Morris, actually modified the bill to exclude some even more severe restrictions, such as provisions that would have outlawed linking personal information with other information gathered from the devices, prohibited third-party disclosure, allowed for criminal prosecution, and allowed consumers to request any information stored about them.

The bill is in committee, with lobbying efforts from both RFID and retail-related groups opposing the bill, and privacy groups for it.