California Law Would Require Companies To Disclose All Consumer Data Collected

Trailrunner7 writes "California, which set the standard for data breach notifications nationwide, is again seeking to set a precedent by becoming the first state in the nation to require companies upon request disclose to California consumers the data they've collected and to whom it was shared during the past year. ... The 'Right to Know Act of 2013,' AB 1291 was amended this week to boost its chances of success after being introduced in February by state Assembly member Bonnie Lowenthal. ... It applies to companies that are both on- and off- line Privacy advocacy groups such as the EFF wrote Tuesday that the bill could set a precedent for other states, much as California's 2002 Breach Notification Act requiring California data breach victims be notified was later replicated by almost all U.S. states." That's not all: you'd be able to request a copy of all the data they've stored about you too.

Comments

Great first step

[mrdogi]

The next step would naturally be to force the companies to correct the data that they have wrong. For example, one link mentioned a woman who lost a job because she was misidentified as having a criminal record.

Here's to hoping.

Re:Great first step

[Hatta]

Why force them? More accuracy increases the value of the database. I'm certainly not participating in the invasion of my own privacy.

Re:Great first step

[Hatta]

I'm happy to let them spend all the money they want on junk advertising. It's a compete waste of time, effort, and resources on their part, and it costs me nothing but a slightly heavier recycling bin. And it performs a valuable service in informing me who *not* to do business with in the future.

Re:Great first step

[Cederic]

1. We are now centralizing all the data to a single point, so hackers have one really good target to get such data.

Really? Where?

now there will be a spot that has the full picture of me

Again, where? Are you planning to contact every company and collate the data they all hold on you, in a single MySQL database attached to the web?

I ask only because nobody else is*

So overnight I become a law abiding citizen to a criminal, where the police will watch me break a law I didn't know I broke, because they see that I have a tendency to do something against the popular fad

How would the police see this? Why would you continue to do it if it was against the law? Are you actually complaining that you can't break the law?

4. How are we going to pay for this. California has a lot of big data companies, that means California will need bigger data just to handle this all.

In the UK it's a cost of doing business. I write to a company with a Subject Access Request, demand all data they hold on me - including HR records, customer records, marketing records, transactional records, paper records and surveillance footage - and they write back saying, "We can only do that if you pay a fee." So I hand over the maximum allowable fee of £10 and they send me.. well, could be a palette of printouts, could be a DVD, could be a polite letter saying, "I'm sorry, we've never heard of you. Why did you write to us?"

* other than Facebook and Google of course

Re:Great first step

[Roman Coder]

Good riddance to them. As a native Californian, who has lived in other states (Texas, Arizona, etc.), I love that my state laws protect me from corporations bad practices.

Also, if you were right, we would not be in such a hurry to do business in China. Business goes where the customers are at. There's a VERY high threshold of anti-business practices before a corporation will forgo profits and move on.

Its ok to make it harder for corporations to make money, as long as its fair/reasonable. They'll make better products, that serves people better.

People > Corporations.

Next step: identify the companies

[gclef]

Interesting side problem: how do you know which corporations have data about you? The big companies like Google are known, but there's alot of other data brokers around...how can I demand data from a company I don't know about?