This appeared last week:
California Passes Sweeping Data-Privacy Bill
By passing bill, legislature headed off a more restrictive ballot initiative that recently qualified to appear before voters in November
By Marc Vartabedian
California lawmakers gave consumers unprecedented protections for their data and imposed tough restrictions on the tech industry, potentially establishing a privacy template for the rest of the nation.
The law, which was rushed through the legislature this week and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday, broadens the definition of what constitutes personal information and gives California consumers the right to prohibit the sale of personal data to third parties and opt out of sharing it altogether. The bill applies to internet giants such as Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google but also will affect businesses of any size that collect data on their customers.
Ashkan Soltani, a digital researcher and former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission, said the regulations are the first of their kind in the U.S.
While the law only applies to consumers in California, tech companies will likely shift their policies to conform to the new law given the complexity of carving out conflicting standards. It may also spur Congress to consider federal legislation, coming after multiple hearings in which legislators peppered industry executives with questions about whether they were taking data privacy seriously enough.
The bill doesn’t go into effect until 2020 and could still be amended. It is almost certain that major tech firms will lobby heavily to get certain concessions, and an industry group said Thursday that it would push for changes.
By passing the bill, the legislature headed off a more restrictive ballot initiative that recently qualified to appear before California voters in November. The ballot initiative was strongly opposed by most of the tech industry, which broadly viewed the legislation as the lesser of two evils.
At a press briefing on Thursday, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company supported the bill.
Alastair MacTaggart, a San Francisco real-estate developer who spearheaded the ballot initiative, said the passage of a data-privacy law in Silicon Valley’s home state bodes well for privacy advocates around the U.S. “If it happened here, it will happen in the rest of the country,” Mr. MacTaggart said at a press conference at the Capitol building in Sacramento following the governor’s signing. He said he would withdraw the ballot initiative.
“My hope is other states will follow, ensuring privacy and safeguarding personal information in a way the federal government has so far been unwilling to do,” said state Sen. Bill Dodd (D., Napa), who co-authored the law.
The law that was passed has some similarities with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation law, which went into effect last month.
Lots more here:
As pointed out this follows the introduction in Europe of newer much stricter personal data protection regulation.Interestingly the US approach to achieve a similar end to the Europeans is but is stronger on allowing opt-out of data sharing rather than seeking to force deliberate opt-in.
With Silicon Valley being within the State and with the economy being more than 15% of the national economy (alone it would be the 5th biggest economy on earth!) the influence of this law will become pervasive as it is implemented over the next few years.The bottom line is in Europe and the US the game is changing (much more quickly than I imagined) and it is true that Australia is starting to look like a backwater when it comes to data privacy, especially with health data as a colleague said to me this morning.
The risk here is timing where a solution conceived a decade ago, in much different times, gets shoved down the throats of an unsuspecting populace only to have later to be got rid of when it does not conform to public expectations and attitudes. The days of being able to just assume consent to any use of personal data are fast vanishing.
The ADHA should take notice before it comes a serious cropper.
David.
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