Stay At Home Orders May Have Killed California’s Ballot Initiative to Expand CCPA [**Update – But Californians for Consumer Privacy Say Maybe Not**]
UPDATE: Soon after we published the post below, we learned that the sponsors of the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) – i.e., the ballot initiative that aimed to amend and significantly expand the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) – intend to push forward with their attempt to get it on the ballot this year. On May 4th, the initiative’s sponsors, the Californians for Consumer Privacy, announced on Twitter they were submitting to counties across the state. Whether county election officials can verify the signatures in time to qualify for the November 2020 ballot remains to be seen. While conventional wisdom is that the recommended April deadline is an important one to make, the approval process may be different this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and how it might affect the availability of resources to approve initiatives. We will continue to monitor this situation and provide updates on Data Matters as appropriate.
The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), the ballot initiative that aimed to amend and significantly expand the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), including by creating the California’s very own data protection authority, the nation’s first, appears to be dead–at least for this ballot season.
CCPA Marches On: California Attorney General Proposes Further Revisions to CCPA Regulations, Industry Pleads for Enforcement Delay Amid COVID-19 Crisis
While the world seems to have ground to a halt in so many ways, time still marches on, and along with it, the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) enforcement date (July 1, 2020) inches ever closer. On March 11, 2020, the California Attorney General (“AG”) released the third turn of proposed California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) regulations. The AG’s revisions make only moderate changes to the last round of regulations issued in February 2020. Businesses will not need to dramatically change compliance plans as the proposed revised regulations seek to refine requirements in prior drafts rather than introduce any wholesale changes to the regulatory framework. (more…)
A February 2020 Surprise: California Attorney General Proposes Significant Revisions to CCPA Regulations
Just as companies were starting to recover from their exertions to put in place California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) compliance programs before the law’s January 1, 2020 entry into force, the California Attorney General (“AG”) provided an early February surprise. CCPA watchers long expected that the AG would revise the CCPA regulations he initially proposed on October 10, 2019. But when the AG actually released his proposed regulations on February 7 – a proposal he subsequently modified slightly on February 10 – both the timing and breadth of the revisions were surprising. In short, the revisions were both sooner and more significant than expected.
CCPA 2.0 Moves to Next Critical Stage of Referendum Process
In the evening of December 17, 2019, Californians for Consumer Privacy, the consumer privacy rights organization led by Alastair Mactaggart that propelled California towards the U.S.’s first comprehensive privacy legislation, tweeted the Attorney General’s release of the title and summary for Initiative 19-0021. This Initiative would substantively amend and essentially replace the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) with the proposed Consumer Privacy Rights Act of 2020—also known colloquially as CCPA 2.0. (more…)
CCPA In-Depth Series: Draft Attorney General Regulations on Verification, Children’s Privacy and Non-Discrimination
This post is the third in a three part series taking a deep dive into the five key articles of the Attorney General’s CCPA draft regulations: Article 2 on Notice to Consumers; Article 3 on Business Practices for Handling Consumer Requests; Article 4 on Verification of Requests; Article 5 on Special Rules Regarding Minors; and Article 6 on Non-Discrimination. Today we look at verification, children’s privacy and the non-discrimination provisions. Visit the CCPA Monitor for a collection of all our CCPA insights.
INTRO AND BACKGROUND. In the summer of 2018, the California Legislature drafted and passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in record time. Facing a procedural deadline for a ballot initiative, the Legislature acted with dispatch, as it did not want to add to the State Constitution, with its super-majority amendment requirements, many of the provisions that ultimately found their way into the CCPA. This abbreviated legislative process produced a bill with numerous gaps and anomalies, however. Businesses, consumer advocates, and privacy watchers have thus been eagerly waiting for over a year for the Attorney General to propose the regulations the CCPA requires him to promulgate.
On October 10, 2019, this wait finally ended. As laid out below, the nature and breadth of the Attorney General’s proposed regulations explain why they took so long to produce. Put simply, the proposed regulations are significant and will have substantial implications on businesses’ ongoing efforts to comply with the CCPA with less than three months left to go before the effective date. Indeed, even if they do not resolve all of the Law’s many ambiguities, they do provide helpful implementation guidance – along with surprising new requirements, some of which may questionably extend beyond the CCPA itself.
CCPA In-Depth Series: Draft Attorney General Regulations on Consumer Requests
This post is the second in a three part series taking a deep dive into the five key articles of the Attorney General’s CCPA draft regulations: Article 2 on Notice to Consumers; Article 3 on Business Practices for Handling Consumer Requests; Article 4 on Verification of Requests; Article 5 on Special Rules Regarding Minors; and Article 6 on Non-Discrimination. Today we look at consumer requests. Check back daily for the next installment, or visit the CCPA Monitor for a collection of all our CCPA insights.
Intro and Background. In the summer of 2018, the California Legislature drafted and passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in record time. Facing a procedural deadline for a ballot initiative, the Legislature acted with dispatch, as it did not want to add to the State Constitution, with its super-majority amendment requirements, many of the provisions that ultimately found their way into the CCPA. This abbreviated legislative process produced a bill with numerous gaps and anomalies, however. Businesses, consumer advocates, and privacy watchers have thus been eagerly waiting for over a year for the Attorney General to propose the regulations the CCPA requires him to promulgate.
On October 10, 2019, this wait finally ended. As laid out below, the nature and breadth of the Attorney General’s proposed regulations explain why they took so long to produce. Put simply, the proposed regulations are significant and will have substantial implications on businesses’ ongoing efforts to comply with the CCPA with less than three months left to go before the effective date. Indeed, even if they do not resolve all of the Law’s many ambiguities, they do provide helpful implementation guidance – along with surprising new requirements, some of which may questionably extend beyond the CCPA itself.
CCPA In-Depth Series: Draft Attorney General Regulations on Consumer Notice
This post is the first in a three part series taking a deep dive into the five key articles of the Attorney General’s CCPA draft regulations: Article 2 on Notice to Consumers; Article 3 on Business Practices for Handling Consumer Requests; Article 4 on Verification of Requests; Article 5 on Special Rules Regarding Minors; and Article 6 on Non-Discrimination. Today we look at consumer notice. Check back daily for the next installment, or visit the CCPA Monitor for a collection of all our CCPA insights.
Intro and Background. In the summer of 2018, the California Legislature drafted and passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in record time. Facing a procedural deadline for a ballot initiative, the Legislature acted with dispatch, as it did not want to add to the State Constitution, with its super-majority amendment requirements, many of the provisions that ultimately found their way into the CCPA. This abbreviated legislative process produced a bill with numerous gaps and anomalies, however. Businesses, consumer advocates, and privacy watchers thus have been eagerly waiting for over a year for the Attorney General to propose the regulations the CCPA requires him to promulgate.
On October 10, 2019, this wait finally ended. As laid out below, the nature and breadth of the Attorney General’s proposed regulations explain why they took so long to produce. Put simply, the proposed regulations are significant and will have substantial implications on businesses’ ongoing efforts to comply with the CCPA with less than three months left to go before the effective date. Indeed, even if they do not resolve all of the Law’s many ambiguities, they do provide helpful implementation guidance – along with surprising new requirements, some of which may questionably extend beyond the CCPA itself.
Final California Consumer Privacy Act Amendments Bring Practical Changes (But Your Business May Now Be a California “Data Broker”)
After months of wrangling, the California legislature has finally passed a set of significant amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a sweeping data privacy and security law commonly referred to as “California’s GDPR” (Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation). Employee personal information and personal information obtained in business-to-business (B2B) interactions are now mostly out of scope. Personal information in credit reports and other data covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act is also largely exempt. Only personal information that is “reasonably” capable of being associated with a consumer or household is subject to the act. And aggregate or deidentified information definitively does not qualify as CCPA personal information.
Where Does Privacy Go From Here: California, EU and Indian Data Privacy Laws and Global Compliance Programs
This article first appeared on Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence.
The summer of 2018 may be regarded as a pivotal time in the history of data privacy laws. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in May 2018, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was signed into law in June 2018 (and comes into effect on January 1, 2020), and a draft of India’s Personal Data Protection Bill (India DP Bill) was released in July 2018 (and is now under review by India’s government).
These developments, and more generally, the recent proliferation of data privacy laws around the world (notably, in Australia, China, Brazil, Hong Kong, and Singapore) represent a compliance challenge for many multinational organizations.
Navigating the CCPA’s ‘Notice and Cure’ Provision
*This article was first published by Bloomberg Law in August 2019
Companies doing business with California consumers are impacted by the California Consumer Privacy Act (effective Jan. 1, 2020). The CCPA’s private right of action provision gives California residents the right to sue companies when their personal information is subject to unauthorized access and exfiltration, theft, or disclosure due to a company’s failure “to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices.”
Under this provision, consumers may seek actual damages, declaratory or injunctive relief, and statutory damages, which begin at $100 and continue up to $750 “per consumer per incident.” The potential aggregated exposure through consumer class actions could be significant, and companies are searching for ways to mitigate private lawsuits.