The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 was approved unanimously by the state Senate and Assembly today and was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.
A legislative bill summary says the law will give Californians "the right to know what PI [personal information] is being collected about them and whether their PI is being sold and to whom; the right to access their PI; the right to delete PI collected from them; the right to opt-out or opt-in to the sale of their PI, depending on age of the consumer; and the right to equal service and price, even if they exercise such rights."
Consumers Union, the advocacy division of Consumer Reports, was an early supporter of the ballot initiative. While the organization said it was pleased that many of the initiative’s provisions were included in the new law, it urged changes to certain aspects of the law that are different from the ballot initiative, and pledged to work for more substantial reforms.
Justin Brookman, the Director of Consumer Privacy and Technology Policy for Consumers Union, said, “We appreciate that this law advances consumer protections in several ways. It gives people access to the information that companies have about them. It extends the right to control the sale of your data, and it provides new security protections in the wake of the Equifax breach.
“However, we have serious concerns about how this legislation introduces very troubling concepts into law. We oppose a provision in the law that allows companies to charge higher prices to consumers who decline to have their information sold to third parties. The California state constitution grants people an inviolable right to privacy. Consumers should not be charged for exercising that right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @08:46PM (4 children)
small or medium site...
is the target of these laws. The giants have no problem with them. They can afford to 'hire people'. Let's hope for its quick demise in the court system. And the judge should fine the legislature for wasting public resources in writing such slop. On the other hand, we must demand access to any and all data collected on us. If my name is in there, then I claim entitlement in knowing all about it.
Also this bill was a highly watered down virtually toothless version of the initiative.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 02 2018, @12:24AM (3 children)
You're aware that most admins don't even know what data they have about you, right? Databases tend to grow beyond what you can remember over the years. Bytram/martyb spent days just figuring out where all we store ipid hashes and for how long not long ago.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:25AM (2 children)
They have a computer, right? Let the machine do the searching for any instance of a name.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:06AM (1 child)
What MySQL query would you use for that if I might ask? Me, I'd have to do a describe on every table and dump it to a file so I could first grep and then less through it. Then I'd have to check columns to see whether they are what I think they are. Schema and naming consistency has not been a hallmark of rehash's history.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:08AM
Do you really need MySQL to search for a specific string of letters anywhere on your system? Hell, even Windows can index file contents. But you shouldn't have to know anything about 'files' and 'tables' and whatnot. Let the programmers deal with that. And remind them that we are still the stone age with these contraptions. We still can't explain to the machine what "is" is. If the computer can't do the job, can't read the data you are looking for, then throw the thing away and get a good secretary [youtube.com].
Remember, the population is only just over 7.5gig, it can all fit on a dual layered DVD