patrick.net

SACRAMENTO — California is taking center stage, with a federal data privacy deal sputtering in Washington, in the battle over how companies handle consumer data — a familiar role for the giant state with a long history of compelling industry changes.

Just months before the state's new privacy law is set to take effect, Silicon Valley giants and other corporations are facing off against privacy advocates in a last-ditch effort to alter the measure, the California Consumer Privacy Act, in the supermajority Democratic Legislature. ...

With four weeks left of the legislative session, trade associations representing Facebook, Google and a host of other corporations are expected to unleash their lobbying firepower to secure exemptions, if not a delay, when lawmakers return to Sacramento on Monday. In the year's second quarter alone, industry groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to influence privacy legislation, according to their lobbying disclosure reports.

After two failed bids to strengthen the 2018 law, data-privacy advocates say their goal for the year is simply to keep the Privacy Act intact.

"We’re basically looking to hold the line on everything." said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based group that advocates for stronger consumer protections online. "We’re watching for gut-and-amends and the usual shenanigans on the floor."

Under the law, any company doing business in California, regardless of whether it has a physical presence in the state, must reveal what personal information they have collected about any California resident, upon request. Californians will also be able to ask a business or a data broker to stop selling that information, and to delete it.