The Trojan Horse Threatening California Privacy

California policymakers have gotten a lot of things wrong over the years, but the state can be legitimately proud of its leadership in some key areas. One of them is protecting individual privacy rights.  A bill that will come up for a hearing in the State Senate this Wednesday would weaken some of those and consumers should be alert to it.

Almost 70 years ago, one of the first bills Ronald Reagan signed into law as a new governor in 1967 was the California Invasion of Privacy Act.  One of the nation’s strictest privacy protection laws, it was originally designed to protect individuals from unauthorized recording or eavesdropping on telephone calls.

With the advent of new technology, the law has since been updated to include new devices such as mobile and cordless phones and protections for confidential communications with healthcare providers.

The Privacy Act is the foundation of California’s sweeping privacy protection laws regulating the Internet.  Right now, if a company wants to capture and use communications and data gathered from you, you must affirmatively agree that can happen.

But those protections would be watered down under SB 690 by Senator Anna Caballero (D-Salinas), which would allow an exemption for a broad category of “commercial business purposes” to bypass the Privacy Act’s all-party consent requirement.  Under the new law, firms could use the pretext that they have a loosely defined business purpose to access your personal data and give away your data privacy.  The only protection you would have is to hunt through complicated settings on a website and turn off monitoring tools you never turned on.

The burden would be placed on you – the consumer – to protect your data.

The change is being sought by companies who say it will combat “frivolous lawsuits” and provide updates for modern technology. There certainly are too many lawsuits, but SB 690 is not the way to draw careful distinctions between legitimate claims and attorneys trolling for dollars.

It offers a sweeping exemption that fits closely with the business model of the leading tech platforms and data brokers who desperately want to be able to use your information. They are in the business of building detailed profiles of you, your family and your consumer preferences. No longer needing your explicit consent, they want to create an even bigger pipeline of online tracking of you that can then be accessed by advertisers, lenders, and government agencies.

A year ago, the California Senate unanimously passed SB 690, but enough consumer awareness and political opposition surfaced that the Assembly put it on hold and made it a two-year bill which would have to be reheard this year.  The Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection hearing this Wednesday is an attempt to revive it and push it through the legislature as it rushes to finish its work for the year.

But a growing number of privacy advocates and consumer groups are warning that the bill puts the safety and privacy of millions of Californians at risk.  It has critics on both the left and right, since privacy should not be not a partisan issue.

It’s time to slow down the Trojan Horse threatening privacy that SB 690 represents. If it becomes law, it would have national implications given that two-thirds of America’s biggest tech companies are based in California. As with so many other things, what starts in California can ripple across the country.

California’s tech sector is the envy of the world. It is living proof that strong privacy standards and consumer protections can live side by side with the vibrancy and innovation of Silicon Valley.

There is no need for SB 690. If frivolous lawsuits need to be addressed, a more targeted tort reform bill is appropriate. But the privacy rights of Californians should not be watered down to appease lobbyists for the data brokerage industry.