I suspect this is a consequence of this not being an existing battleground and there being a small core of people intensely interested enough to help write legislation supported by a broad enough base to convince legislators that they can buy some votes at the polls by supporting this. The only people who will pay attention to it are those who might sign the petition, or the cell phone companies.
Obscure special interest issues are easier to detect constituent consensus and come to agreement on in general.
That's kind of what I'm thinking - the response to the petition was so fast and detailed that it seems they'd already been planning a fix of this legislation.
