SACRAMENTO – A newly proposed bill regarding Internet privacy is advancing in California' legislature, responding to last year’s groundbreaking California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and in the wake of a failed proposal that would have required consumers to affirmatively consent to their personal information being shared.
Assembly Bill 1416 states that it would expand the exemptions of the CCPA by specifying that the obligations imposed on businesses cannot restrict a business's ability to comply with any rules or regulations.
The bill would also expand the current exemption for exercising or defending legal claims to instead allow businesses and governmental agencies to collect, use, retain, sell, authenticate, or disclose a consumer’s personal information in certain legal circumstances.
“It allows the government to function better by allowing governmental organizations that need to use data in order to function to do so – like law enforcement of fraud prevention,” said Kim Stone, principal of Stone Advocacy in Sacramento and former president and CEO of the Civil Justice Association of California. “It allows for them to have and use data appropriately and use information appropriately.”
The CCPA focuses on the right of consumers to know what information business are collecting and who that information is shared with, as well as the ability to opt-out of the sale of the consumer’s personal information.
Online privacy has become a major issue in the Golden State. While some believe the current law protects consumers, others believe that it was rushed and puts Californians at risk – and are looking to amend it with a plethora of proposed bills similar to AB 1416.
“This bill is in response to last year’s big privacy bill which was very broad and done in a compromise to prevent a voter initiative from going forward,” said Stone. “And so because that happened so quickly, this year there are a number of cleanup or fix attempts to make the California Consumer Privacy Act more workable, and this is one of those.”
A key bill that failed on April 23 was AB 1760, which would have renamed the CCPA as the Privacy for All Act. The bill was set to significantly alter the CCPA in several ways, keying on the requirement of businesses to obtain consumers' affirmative opt-in consent to share personal information.