Silicon Valley already thought California’s new data privacy law went too far.
A bill expanding residents’ right to sue under the measure, proposed Monday by state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson and backed by Attorney General Xavier Becerra, may make it even more unpopular.
The privacy law, which was signed into law by former Gov. Jerry Brown last year but doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2020, allows Californians to review the data that companies hold on them and block the firms from selling that information. Enforcement of its provisions, however, was largely limited to the state’s Department of Justice, with consumers allowed to file lawsuits only when they were victims of a data breach.
“As written, the law gives California consumers new rights but denies them the ability to protect themselves, the right to defend themselves in court if the law is violated,” Becerra said in a Monday afternoon news conference. Jackson’s bill, he said, “would restore those rights.”
The potential changes come amid increasing momentum for a federal privacy bill following the theft of identification data for more than 300 million people from Marriott Hotels’ Starwood division last year as well as a breach at credit bureau Equifax in 2017 that exposed similar data for more than 145 million people. While tech companies have supported the idea of uniform U.S. standards, their backing has been motivated in part by hopes of avoiding some of the restrictions imposed in California and possible in other states that might model laws after the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
As home to some of the world’s largest tech companies, including search engine giant Google, California laws governing the industry wield an outsize influence that’s only heightened by its $2.7 trillion economy, the fifth-largest in the world and bigger than the entire United Kingdom.
“As California goes, so goes the nation,” Becerra said, “and sometimes the world. So we know how important it is to get it right when it comes to this new data privacy law. ”
The Department of Justice, which he leads, is responsible for writing the rules that will implement the law and has already held hearings in cities from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Sacramento. Those sessions have identified some weaknesses, and the agency has begun seeking changes from the legislature, including those Jackson proposed.
Passing the new legislation, she said, would make sure one of the nation’s most “significant privacy protections in the nation” are robustly enforced.
“Our constitutional right to privacy continues to face unprecedented assault,” added the Santa Barbara Democrat. “Our locations, relationships, and interests are being tracked without our knowledge, bought and sold by corporate interests for their own economic gain and conducted in order to manipulate us.”
