Security News > 2020 > November > California Voters Expand Data Privacy Law

California voters have backed an initiative expanding a data privacy law criticized by rights watchdogs as having worrying "Loopholes" for firms such as Google and Facebook.

The California Consumer Privacy Act become law at the start of this year, the toughest of its kind in the US. Like the European Data Protection Regulation, applied in the European Union since May 2018, the California law guarantees rights regarding control of online data.

California ACLU officials opposed the initiative, contending it would undermine privacy and increase the burden on people to protect themselves from abuses of their data by big tech companies.

Flaws in the initiative include "Carve-outs written by the credit-reporting industry and new ways to keep consumers in the dark about what companies are doing with their personal information," according to the ACLU. The initiative limits businesses that have to comply with the law to only companies that buy or sell data of at least 100,000 households a year, the ACLU noted.

Backers of the initiative contended that the laws will set the bar for privacy rights in the US. "I look forward to ushering in a new era of consumer privacy rights with passage of the California Privacy Rights Act," said Californians for Consumer Privacy board chairman Andrew Yang.

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