California's new privacy law puts you first. Too bad companies are ignoring it

[steven36]

Days without a CCPA violation: 0.

 

 

For 2020, your New Year's resolution might be to have better control of your digital privacy. In California, it's not just a resolution, it's the law. The problem, though, is that some companies are pushing back against key provisions of the California Consumer Privacy Act. 

 

The law, which came into effect on Jan. 1, is the most sweeping data privacy law in the US, which doesn't have any federal legislation on the issue. California's new rules require companies to tell people what data they're collecting about them, as well as to allow the state's residents to request that those companies refrain from selling their data and delete any information that's been collected. 

 

Many companies have made changes to their privacy policies to follow this new law, and there's a directory that lists how you can request your data and improve your privacy settings. But a handful of companies aren't complying with the new law, whether by failing to provide, essentially, a "do not sell my data" link or button on their websites -- which the law requires -- or arguing that the rules don't apply to them.

 

Facebook said in a December blog post that it doesn't plan to make any changes to its web tracking, believing that the law's definition of selling data doesn't apply to it. The social networking giant argued that it shares data with third parties, which it doesn't consider selling. 

 

But under the new law, sharing is still considered a sale, according to Mary Stone Ross, co-author of the CCPA. 

 

"The definition of 'sell' is written in a way to include the sharing of personal information," said Ross, associate director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC. "They are playing fast and loose with the definition of 'sell.'"

 

Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

 

Enforcement of the CCPA won't happen until July 1. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has raised concerns about a lack of resources to hold companies accountable.

 

Ross said that when writing the bill she anticipated companies would seek to interpret the law as they saw fit. A day after the law went into effect, she said she'd found multiple businesses that aren't complying with the CCPA. 

 

That includes The Weather Channel, a company owned by IBM and facing a lawsuit from the city of Los Angeles over its app's collection of location data on roughly 45 million people. In its privacy policy, updated on Dec. 29, The Weather Channel discloses that "we may have sold information within the categories as defined by the CCPA," but it doesn't have a button to opt out of your data being sold. 

 

IBM didn't respond to a request for comment.

 

Source

[mp68terr]

Looks like a move in the good direction for consumers, but for those not living in a federation of states such as the US it's difficult to follow the relative 'power' of local v.s. state v.s. federal laws. Searched the net and as far as I got it the Supreme Court is the one that makes decisions at the end.

 

There were some posts about the usage of facial recognition technology, some US cities are against so that these technologies are banned there. But comments pointed out that the federal agencies could still use this technology because they don't care about local/state laws. Now how comes that tech companies should follow the California law if nothing oblige them to do so at the national/federal level?

[steven36]

10 minutes ago, mp68terr said:

Looks like a move in the good direction for consumers, but for those not living in a federation of states such as the US it's difficult to follow the relative 'power' of local v.s. state v.s. federal laws. Searched the net and as far as I got it the Supreme Court is the one that makes decisions at the end.

No federal laws  will most likely  be made tell beyond 2021 because its a mess right now ,  but i could be wrong  but i doubt it. Many federal  laws started out as state laws like wearing a seat belt for example .    .