I think you're misinterpreting it as an obsession over privacy. We are victims of unscrupulous scam caller spam due to a multi tiered failure in how our government implements public utilities, and in the meantime we are chiseling at solutions such as enforcing rules on the data brokers who have our information for lease.

Which seems to be working, for people that pay for services to solve this problem. And California's government is simply doing that same service for free for its residents.