More California Stupidity

The consumer privacy law that California’s governor signed

into law on June 28 is considered the strongest, most

aggressive privacy protection measure in the U.S., according

to legal experts.

The new California law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2020,

will require that companies tell state residents what information

the company is collecting and how it’s used. It also gives

people options to ask the company to delete or stop selling that

information. The law does not prevent companies from collecting

people’s information or give people an option to ask a company

to stop collecting their information, differentiating it from GDPR.

“The sweeping nature of this bill is really unprecedented in the

privacy area, and its impacts are still far from known,” said

Dan Jaffe, group evp for government relations at the Association

of National Advertisers.

The law contains “broad sweeping definitions of personal

information,” said Ron Camhi, managing partner at law firm

Michelman & Robinson’s Los Angeles office and chair of its

advertising and digital media industry group. That personal

information includes standard categories like people’s names,

email addresses and Social Security numbers. But it also covers

unique personal identifiers: IP addresses; geolocation data;

shopping, browsing and search histories; and consumer profiles

that are based on inferences from personal information.