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New California Ballot Measure Demands Groundbreaking Privacy Rights (mercurynews.com)
Supporters gathered 625,000 signatures to put the "California Consumer Privacy Act" on the ballot in November -- far exceeding the 365,880 signatures needed to qualify. The Mercury News reports:
The proposed initiative aims to allow consumers to see what personal information companies are collecting about them and ask the companies to stop selling that information, and also seeks to hold businesses accountable for data breaches. "Today is a major step forward in our campaign, and an affirmation that California voters care deeply about the fundamental privacy protections provided in the California Consumer Privacy Act," said Alastair Mactaggart, the San Francisco real estate developer who is bankrolling the measure. He has spent $1.65 million on the effort, according to filings with the California secretary of state.
The measure is opposed by companies such as AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Google, which have all donated $200,000 each to fight the measure. Facebook has also given $200,000 to the opposition. However, Facebook last month said it would leave the effort to fight the initiative.
The article notes that Facebook's decision to stop publicly opposing the privacy measure occurred "around the time Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was testifying to Congress about the company's Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal."
The measure is opposed by companies such as AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Google, which have all donated $200,000 each to fight the measure. Facebook has also given $200,000 to the opposition. However, Facebook last month said it would leave the effort to fight the initiative.
The article notes that Facebook's decision to stop publicly opposing the privacy measure occurred "around the time Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was testifying to Congress about the company's Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal."
Isn't he going to kill the goose laying his golden eggs?
The very same government that would enforce this violates your privacy every day.
Who watches the watchers? And why should you trust them?
Companies should not be allowed to sell or share data on customers with any other company. Any data they collect should only be allowed to be used for their own internal business purposes. Sad it's come to this but enough has become enough.
Protecting people against activities that make the rich richer and violate the non-rich? What is capitalism coming to! This must be socialism, right?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We absolutely need real subpoena power over our own data, no matter where it is located (It's all in Utah anyway). We can't verify or stop its collection, but we do have to pry the lid open by whatever force necessary to ensure nobody has the advantage.
Let's hope California cuts itself off from social media. Would make the Internet a much nicer places without all that SF-based outrage over everything.
You know what?
Fuck direct democracy and fuck California ballot measures.
This kind of stuff is what gets us into such a mess in the first place, where policymakers and regulators get their hands tied by people voting (or being asked to vote) on things that are beyond their level of knowledge to make a judgement call on, even if you're super informed about the issues.
In the next June election, we have the following ballot measures:
1. Authorizing a $4 billion bond (yes $4 Billion loan) for environmental / parks projects
2. Putting various procedural requirements on the decision to use cap-and-trade funds (what does that even mean/imply)
3. Including rain capture systems in property taxes
etc.etc.etc.
Why am I being asked to decide on these hugely consequential things (#1 + 2)? Why is the public being asked whether it's good to take out a $4B loan? Of course they're going to say yes, without a care in the world! Why is #3 even in the same category as the rest? A few years ago, there was even the ballot measure addressing disease testing of porn actors.
This is fucking ridiculous. It's time to stop believing the public has the knowledge and the attention span and more importantly the informed judgement to make these kinds of calls. Stop believing that you're qualified to decide things that aren't your job, and believe in effective government -- and give that government the tools and power to do so.
Democracy will be the death of democracy otherwise.
We joke about Google cutting off companies or groups they disagree with, but with this ballot and the right to get companies to stop selling your information, they may just find themselves cut off.
Seems even after the cokeheaded thieves of the industry managed to undermind them to near-deat and not even allow them to live in the USA, we still succeeded.
Because the time was simply ripe.
Of course the exponential nature of the growth of data kraken insanity helped quite a bit.
Next step: Making government (in the USA that means the corporate oligarchy) so transparent, they can be held accountable.
Gosh, I wonder what opinion Google Asshole Shillden has about this??
Nice work, libtards. More laws, more rules, more interferince in the free market.
The scope of data collection is so vast, so pervasive, so all encompassing, that companies may not even know what all data they hold about you.
Sure, they can cough up what's explicitly attached to your profile, if you have a profile, or your shadow profile. But the indirection inferences possible from other things are mind bogglingly vast, and they don't exist until someone bothers to make them.
Google may know you visited a site about liver cancer, because that site like most sites uses Google services. That's logged in a log file somewhere, but maybe not as "Joe Bloggs may have liver cancer or know someone who does".
Statistical patterns also provide data. When did you visit? That reveals info about your sleep / wake patterns. Info your friends disclose about you provides yet more data for them, but it may be attached to your friends' profiles. Still, the inferences are there waiting to be made.
I don't want data harvesters like Facebook and Google to be collecting any data about people who have not explicitly opted in.
They just use their "government" face (lobbyist politicians) whenever they do something you livestock might not like, to get you to hate the very and onl concept that could save you from them: An *actual* government. Like an *actually* democratic one. Aka without "representatives" (aka corporate lobbyists), let alone senators (aka "former" nobility old boys club. *literally*.).
Provide a clear and conspicuous link on the business's homepage, titled "Do Not Sell My Personal Information," to a webpage that enables a consumer, or a person authorized by the consumer, to opt out of the sale of the consumer's personal information.
Consumers? What are those? What about products? What link do products click on?
I bet this form is going to ask for personal information. Earlier in the text businesses are only required to respond to "verifiable" requests. If it is some anonymous thing how do you verify that or not forget next time IP/cookies/whatever are dumped/expire? Safe bet this will be massively abused by phishers.
Make available to consumers two or more designated methods for submitting requests for information required to be disclosed pursuant to sections 1798.100 and 1798.101, including, at a minimum, a toll-free telephone number, and if the business maintains a website, a website address.
What's the point of requiring every covered business to have a toll-free telephone number? Why not simply require parity with whatever channel the consumer used to interact with the company?
This Act shall not apply to the sale of personal information to or from a consumer reporting agency ifthat information is to be reported in, or used to generate, a consumer report
So the most egregious stalkers with the most influence over peoples lives get a free pass?
The CA state government is serious about controlling and/or protecting its environment, gun ownership, etc.. They also tax its citizens more than other states by a significant margin. To be effective in this endeavor, they "state" has to collect a TON of private data - far more than any corporation.
Yet they want to protect individuals from corporate abuse of data collection and sale?
While the effort is noble and I agree that corporations have long overreached on data collection while keeping the federal government at bay in D.C. with fierce bribery... er, fierce lobbying, this move feels more hypocritical (and power-hungry) than helpful to average citizens.
Itâ(TM)s all California does.
Great! Let Californians pay for access to sites.
Nothing wrong with paying, just something I'd rather avoid.
Of course, since this is /. I'd also point out that we can run most of the things these cloudy companies provide on our own systems for a little hassle and slight inconvenience from time to time.
Check out the sovereign project on github.
And to help ensure you really are blocking cloudy companies, you might want to run pi-hole and put their address into a black hole.
Yes, because Google has stopped doing business in all of Europe due to the GDPR (which I will add is much more strict and has more teeth than this proposed legislation).
OH WAIT that is not true at all. It turns out that folks DO want Google services? You don't say...
Since when is social media, free stuff where you are the product, and business models which treat employees like contractors considered tech leadership?
Maybe Silicon Valley should get back to doing things which made tangible products such as CPU's, and specialized chips.
Maybe instead of "Silcon Valley", it should be called "Silly Ventures"
Since all California-based multinationals modified their practice for EU's GDPR, asking them for provisions covered by this legislation should not cost them much (except in lost data sales, of course).
But given the political leanings of the press, I doubt there will be much investigative reporting into it.
Looks like this is an opt-out bill, but one thing I don't like about it is how it literally requires the link to be called "Do Not Sell My Personal Information".
Think about it.
The authors of our US Constitution and Bill of Rights had no concept of information age relevance to privacy issues.
If they did, you can bet your every breath that provisions for protection of these Rights would more clearly be indicated.
So, when you consider full context of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, we US Citizens have already been violated!
How is this remedied now?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
How does is compare with the GDPR of the EU?