Civil libertarians have complained, with good reason, about the dissemination of personal information, particularly health and financial data, by banks and other private businesses, and supported state legislation to protect Californians' privacy.

The hotly debated privacy legislation carried by Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, has generally drawn support from liberal Democrats and opposition from conservative Republicans. Oddly, however, those positions are reversed when it comes to invading the privacy of children.

Several years ago, Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, carried a rather sneaky bill that would -- without spelling it out -- have allowed schools to interrogate 6-year-old children about the most intimate aspects of family life, what was termed "social history." It was needed, Steinberg and others argued, to give schools an opportunity to intervene when home conditions threatened children's health and safety.

The Steinberg bill went nowhere, but a year later, Sen. Wes Chesbro, D-Arcata, introduced a bill that would have done much the same thing, although he restricted its effects, for reasons best known to himself, just to poor children. Their families' privacy could have been violated, but that of more affluent families would have been respected.

The busybodies are back this year with a new legislative effort to make it easier to interrogate schoolchildren about their personal lives, again with the declared motive of bringing dangerous or unhealthy circumstances to official attention.

The author this year is Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, and her legislation is aimed at overturning a current law that prohibits schools from administering surveys about students' personal lives unless parents give their specific permission for participation. Hancock's measure would create, instead, an "opt-out" procedure in which the surveys could be conducted unless parents objected. It's a direct descendant of the Steinberg and Chesbro legislation.

Liberals lined up behind Hancock's bill when it reached the Assembly floor the other day, and Republicans opposed it. Hancock, echoing the arguments made by Steinberg and Chesbro, said deeper research into students' lives is needed for effective prevention programs.

"We want to hold our schools accountable for keeping students safe," she said. "We want to be able to devise the most effective prevention and education programs to reach these kids." But conservatives opposed it just as strenuously. "It's a moral issue, an ethical issue," Assemblyman Jay LaSuer, R-La Mesa, countered. "We have no right sticking our nose into a family's business. The state is not a better parent than the parent."

Some Democrats also opposed Hancock's measure and she delayed a vote, seeking amendments that might garner a majority vote.

The confluence of the Hancock and Speier bills is steeped in irony. Those who vociferously defend privacy when it comes to adults and their financial information are more than willing to subject children to intense interrogation about their families' lives. And those who oppose the latter as a "moral issue" are not willing to extend their concerns to financial data. Oddly, even the American Civil Liberties Union supports Hancock's bill, one that violates the privacy of children and the right of their parents to know how their offspring are being questioned, while it supports the privacy-protecting Speier measure.

Even the approaches of the two measures are in direct conflict. Speier wants financial institutions to secure permission before customers' "non-public personal information" can be disclosed to others, a process known as "opt-in" that gives consumers the maximum control over their privacy. Speier has resisted bankers' suggestions that they be allowed to distribute the information unless consumers "opt out." The "opt-in" process is already the law on interrogating students about their personal lives, but Hancock and her supporters want to change it to "opt out."

We don't expect perfect consistency in political decision-making, but the inconsistency represented by the Speier and Hancock bills, and their conflicting lineups of supporters and opponents, is stark indeed.