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Californians were voting in favor of a new regulatory board dedicated to data privacy Tuesday night, building on its landmark attempt to regulate the data practices of tech companies that were largely birthed in the Golden State.
Proposition 24, the Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act Initiative, was comfortably ahead with 57% of the vote, with more than one-third of precincts reporting Tuesday evening. It is designed as an expansion of California’s previous voter-approved data-privacy law — the California Consumer Privacy Act, which passed in 2018 and is roughly similar to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations, or GDPR — and would authorize California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to pursue actions against offending companies while creating an oversight agency.
Read more: All you need to know about California’s landmark privacy law
Real-estate developer Alastair Mactaggart, the principal author of both propositions, called the passage of Prop. 24 a “perfect storm” of “the most liberal electorate in California for this election” as well as consumer sentiment against the dominance of large technology companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, +1.31% GOOG, +1.48% Google, Facebook Inc. FB, +1.50%, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +1.46%, and others.
Sensing landslide support of the proposition amid a tech-lash, Google and Facebook, both of whom could be most affected by Prop. 24, were conspicuously quiet in the months leading to the vote.
For more: ‘We don’t know what the impact will be,’ Facebook CFO says of California privacy law
The new regulation creates the California Privacy Protection Agency to implement and enforce the CCPA, giving more enforcement heft to the previous law. The concept of a new regulatory body focused on tech has been kicked around on a national level as well, with calls for a federal agency to police the biggest tech companies.
“Despite the passage of the CCPA, few companies have meaningfully curbed their data-sharing practices, even when a consumer asks them to stop,” Justin Brookman, director of technology policy at Consumer Reports, said in a statement. “Proposition 24 would close up some of the worst loopholes in the CCPA, to help make the new law more workable for consumers.”
Consumer advocates have been split on the proposition after largely backing the CCPA’s passage, though, claiming it has new loopholes. While Prop. 24 was supported by Common Sense Media and the NAACP, consumer-rights advocates such as the ACLU of Northern California and Electronic Frontier Foundation opposed it because they don’t think it goes far enough.
Despite incremental steps forward from CCPA, Prop. 24 “puts the burden on people to protect themselves — in ways that will disproportionately harm poor people and people of color,” Jacob Snow, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, told MarketWatch.
Snow said that Prop. 24 is full of loopholes that undermine consumer privacy, including a carveout written by the credit-reporting industry, weakened privacy protections for Californians when they travel, and new ways to keep consumers in the dark about what companies are doing with their personal information.
Adam Schwartz, staff attorney with the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the bill a “mixed bag of partial steps forward and partial steps backward.”
One of his particular objections is the expansion of so-called “pay for privacy” schemes, which would exempt “loyalty clubs” from the CCPA’s existing limit on businesses charging different prices to consumers who exercise their privacy rights.
Bitter feelings between Mactaggart, who has bankrolled both propositions, and groups like the ACLU and EFF could be playing a role in those disagreements, though, according to Jen King, director of consumer privacy at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society.
“Privacy advocates are fundamentally upset because Alastair walked in with CCPA and hijacked the process. He did literally overnight what they couldn’t do for at least 15 years,” King told MarketWatch.
“The fear is that CCPA and Prop. 24 will become models for the rest of the nation, and that it does not go far enough. These bills have been total game changers.”
“On balance, will [Prop. 24] strengthen California privacy law? Yes,” said Jim Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media, the nonprofit that helped Mactaggart craft and push CCPA but was not involved in the writing of Prop. 24. “Is it perfect? No. But it improves things.”
