Reply #45: Yes.. by all means.... [View All]

Rebecca Lucile Schaeffer (November 6, 1967 – July 18, 1989) was an American actress best known for her role in the sitcom My Sister Sam. Schaeffer was stalked and then murdered by an obsessed fan, prompting the passage of anti-stalking laws in California.

On July 18, 1989, Schaeffer was murdered by Robert John Bardo, an obsessed fan who had been stalking her for three years.<4> Bardo had become fixated on Schaeffer after his previous fixation, child peace activist Samantha Smith, was killed in an airplane crash.

In 1989, after viewing Schaeffer's film Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, in which she appeared in bed with a male actor, Bardo became enraged and decided that Schaeffer should be punished for becoming "another Hollywood whore."<7> Having read that Theresa Saldana's stalker, Arthur Richard Jackson, had obtained Saldana's address through a private investigator, Bardo approached a Tucson detective agency and paid them $250 to get her home address through California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records.

Driver's Privacy Protection Act

The Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994 is a United States federal statute governing the privacy and disclosure of personal information gathered by state Departments of Motor Vehicles. The law was passed in 1994 after the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer. It is currently codified at Chapter 123 of Title 18 of the United States Code.<1>

The statute prohibits the disclosure of personal information (as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2725) without the express consent of the person to whom such information applies, with the exception of certain circumstances set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 2721. These rules apply to Departments of Motor Vehicles as well as other "authorized recipient of personal information", and imposes record-keeping requirements on those "authorized recipients".