Technology firms are eager to amend the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) following a letter sent by trade groups to lawmakers. However, the suggestions put forward have distanced them from privacy advocates.
Tech giants such as Google, PayPal and Facebook want privacy advocates to make changes before the Act becomes law in January 2020.
The CCPA is being heralded as the ‘magic bullet’ that will deliver more transparency over the way businesses use individuals’ Personal Information, and more importantly, the ability for “data subjects” to request their data to be deleted and not sold, shared, or passed on to third parties.
The CCPA imitates many of the key attributes of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), although it is not as strict and certainly not as extensive.
In the 20-page letter from 38 trade groups, a multitude of criticisms have been levelled putting the group at odds with privacy advocates. The document argues that the law was “hastily passed” and proposes “amendments to address drafting errors, and to fix aspects of this bill that would be unworkable and that would result in negative consequences unintended by the authors.”
The organisations involved are demanding the removal of the requirement for businesses to identify “specific pieces of information” about consumers. They claim this could create the risk of inadvertent disclosure to a fraudster posing as the consumer.
In response, large number of privacy advocacy groups sent their own letter, accusing the tech giants of trying to “water down the CCPA’s privacy protections.”
