The Trojan Horse Threatening California Privacy
The burden would be placed on you – the consumer – to protect your data
By John Fund, June 30, 2026 8:17 am
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.
- The Trojan Horse Threatening California Privacy - June 30, 2026
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I use a couple of privacy focused browsers (unlike most, actually work as advertized). Compartmenalized phone contact with virtual phone numbers (medical, business, friends and family, one with an old ported in number that’s been in my name for years, and one strictly for banking. It can be configured as a white list, if you’re not on the list, you’re not pestering me and I never give up my sim card number. I have a virtual email service with a different email address for every business I patronize, that way I know who’s selling my email address and I can deep six an email address if I get spammed. I’ve done everything I can to cut down on the snooping that is endemic with cell phones – and will soon purchase a degoogled phone. I don’t get chased around the internet with ads, and I don’t get youtube ads while watching youtube content Some people spill their whole lives on social media, I don’t do social media. If they can’t market to me, they have wasted their time in trying.
I also use a couple of quailty vpns, but you have to be carefull with choosing one because some are just as bad as not having vpn at all – some sell your information too, especially the free ones. And, a vpn isn’t a cureall. I used verizon for work because of the super cellular coverage and call quality, but as an isp they were really bad about skimming searches and distributing my data. Someone from verizon gave up the number in my name to a phone I purchased for a girlfried to use, she was getting spam calls directed to me. I’m always careful about text messages, the mobile providers skim your texts and even if you delete your text messaging from your device it’s stays on the telecom’s servers forever. Gmail? Google collects every keystroke, not just the final, edited draft. If you’re aware of how to do it and actually do it, your phone won’t be constantly ringing with telemarketers and scammers, you will be ad free on the internet, you won’t be spending all day deleting email spam and you’ll get a lot less marketing in your postal mailbox.
One last post. Recently there were three different numbers in three states, which were evidently used by the same people, which were trying to call me all day long every day for a whole month on my banking number, even though the calls were rejected before they got to the ringer with a “number not in service” message. I got tired of their numbers cluttering my call log, so I forwarded one of their numbers to the FTC. The calls from all three stopped immediately. There were some other nuisance callers I forwarded to bars in other states, used car salesmen, septic tank pumping outfits, an animal shelter in a far away state, a time and temperature number recording in texas that spent far more time preaching the gospel than informing about time or temperature, an obnoxious religious organization that pounded on my door every week asking if there were spanish speakers in the household (God doesn’t like english speakers?) and even a nudist resort in a state with a quite short summer season. I used a service for my sim card number that uses ai powered robots designed to keep telemarketers on the phone, not commiting to anything and wasting telemarketer time. I was using a ditzy, country fried female bot when a prisoner with a long sentence called a wrong number (mine), was thinking he found a woman to befriend and called every day, long conversation and he never realized he was conversing with a bot. I let it go on for a week or so, then changed to a male bot. The prisoner called once more, immediately hung up and never called again.