http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/05/03/on-the-money-internet-police/Given the fact that most (hopefully all) online retail transactions happen over HTTPS secure and packet sniffing would result in garbled trash, they would have to datamine the actual retailer's information.
“One of the ideas is well, we think there might be some people who will sell us data,” Runner warned about the proposal. “That will tell us what kind of credit card transactions or private transactions that a Californian may have made in purchasing something out of state,” he told CBS 13.
So, if you're a Californian, either YOUR bank, or a retailer out of state, is going to sell data to the CA "Board of Equalization." (Don't you like the name of that agency?) Doesn't that give you warm-fuzzies?
And then the Innernetz Revenooers are going to try to use that as justification for a warrant to investigate your finances, and assess you a use tax since you didn't pay sales tax.
To me, it sounds like any credit card company or bank that goes along with this is going to lose customers to those that don't. As well as retailers. And it also makes pre-paid Visa debit cards more appealing. Or returning back to the "catalog" days where you use the internet site as a "catalog" and then print off an order form and snail-mail a money order in order to buy stuff.
