The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a bill that seeks to protect the privacy of California residents and enhance their consumer protection, reassuring the ownership over their personal information and the right to say “no” to businesses that collect private information.
However, due to its noble goal, it has been targeted by giant tech companies such as Google and Facebook, who have been pushing for amendments in order to protect their business model, which undoubtedly profits from selling personal data in some way or another.
The bill was signed back in June of last year, but it won’t come in effect until January of 2020, which of course gives time enough to the team of lawmakers on both sides to introduce amendments that enhance or detract from its original purpose.
The CCPA is fine and dandy, for now
The good news is that the period to make amendments has ended recently. Only five of them went through and none of them managed to compromise its goal or introduce loopholes that could be exploited in a future by tech giants.
Of these five amendments directed towards the CCPA, three of them became legislative amendments, specifically assembly bills number 25, 874 and 1564, but none of them undermines the CCPA main goals.
The results so far are very promising for the California Consumer Privacy Act and these were praised by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Consumer Reports organization alike.
The ACLU said, “industry tried and failed this session to weaken or eliminate the key protections of the CCPA,” adding that it wished to “applaud the legislature for holding the line against big technology companies.”
However, all the entities involved in the process reiterate the fact the battle is not won yet, there is still so much to do in the legal department, including the exact regulations that will have to be followed by such companies.
In this sense, the first draft of regulations should be submitted for review in October 2019, shortly followed by a period of comments and discussion, as one would expect. On top of that, the bill won’t be enforced until mid-2020, leaving room for tech giants to breathe and of course, push back the California Consumer Privacy Act in any legal way they can.
