Consumer Privacy

Subscribe to Consumer Privacy

In prior posts, we’ve commented on the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), likening it, and its Texas ‘flavored’ variant(s), to ‘elephants in the room’. Here, we’ve opted to expand our coverage and talk about what we’re seeing other states do (or, let’s expand the elephant metaphor to: elephants, elephants everywhere.)

It seems that all of a sudden, consumer privacy is THE hot topic and everyone’s jumping on the CCPA bandwagon! Consumers have woken up to what is happening with their personal information and are demanding government protective action! These are sensationalist statements, to be true, but are they accurate statements? Well, as is usually the case it is a bit more nuanced and it is important to set some things straight.…
Continue Reading

In Part 1 of our ‘Texas Joins the Privacy Fray’ series, we focused on the Texas Consumer Privacy Act. Here, we shine the light on the Texas Privacy Protection Act (HB 4390).

The TXPPA is distinguishable from both the TXCPA and the CCPA because the applicability threasholds are different. For the TXPPA to apply,…

Last month, Texas saw the introduction of not one, but TWO privacy bills in the Texas state legislature: The Texas Consumer Privacy Act (TXCPA) and the Texas Privacy Protection Act (TXPPA). With news of this likely meeting with a collective groan and shoulder shrug, we do have some good news for you.

Both bills’ foundations are set with familiar CA Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) language. Unfortunately, this is also bad news because they both suffer from the same problems found in the CCPA – we’ll explain below. It’s also still early in the game, with the bills having just been filed in the state legislature. Given that there is time in the legislative session for amendments to be made and especially considering the ‘ring-side’ view Texas lawmakers have to the CA legislative and Attorney General rule/procedure process currently unfolding, it would be unreasonable not to expect changes. Finally, the bills are reactive responses to the national (or international) focus on privacy issues of late and may allow impacted businesses a grace period, as we’ve seen in the CCPA. In this blog, we shine the light on the first of these bills: The Texas Consumer Privacy Act.…
Continue Reading

California, home to more than 40 million people and the 5th largest economy in the world, has passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), its omnibus consumer privacy law. The law creates sweeping new requirements concerning the collection, maintenance, and tracking of information for both employees or customers who are residents of California. Many aspects of the implementation and enforcement are still being finalized by the California Attorney General. However, companies with employees or customers in California need to take stock of the information they are processing that could qualify as “personal information” for California residents, and they need to begin establishing mechanisms for compliance before the end of 2019.…
Continue Reading

Welcome to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) […as if we didn’t have enough to worry about with the GDPR!].

The bracketed, italicized text, albeit a bit cynical, is with little doubt, how many of us initially reacted to the news of a new data protection law, hailed as the standard in consumer privacy protection, in California. And while the effective date is supposed to be January of 2020, January of 2019 isn’t too early to starting getting ready for the new law.

To dispel the rumors, the CCPA is not “GDPR-lite.” Where it comes on the heels of the GDPR’s May 2018 enforcement date, it isn’t a mirror image of the GDPR, or even a “watered down” variant of it. Drafters of the CCPA did indeed look to the GDPR as a basis for some of data protection concepts, but they focused on existing California privacy laws as well.

…
Continue Reading

In September of this year, with SB 327, California stepped into the vanguard of information age law by passing a cybersecurity regulation on the Internet of Things. SB 327 has added new sections to Cal. Civil Code §1798. Specifically, §1798.91 et seq. While this seems to be a good thing, the larger question is what does it do, and how far does it reach?
…
Continue Reading

At the end of June, the California legislature passed its Bill 375, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018.  The Act contains a number of concepts that would be familiar to those who are working to bring their companies and organizations into compliance with GDPR.  The new law defines a category of “Personal Information” that …

The clock is now ticking. On May 4th the European Parliament published the final text of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), and the rules of the game have significantly changed – at least in the context of EU data protection law. First, the GDPR changes the underlying approach to data protection law, with a new emphasis placed on accountability and risk-based approaches. “Privacy by Design” and “Privacy by Default” have been included in the regulatory ecosystem. Second, significant changes have been made to the obligations of “controllers” and “processors”. These include specific criteria for having compliant privacy notices and vendor management contracts. Third, enforcement is now a very real, and potentially risky, thing. With the possibility of administrative fines being up to 4% of a business’ global gross revenue, private rights of action by individuals, and non-profit privacy watchdog groups (also known as “Civil Society”) having the right to complain of a company’s privacy practices directly to the local Data Protection Authorities; compliance with the GDPR will now be one of those risks that any business who touches EU data will need to seriously consider. Fortunately, the GDPR won’t go into effect until May 25th 2018. However, businesses with significant data from the EU need to start considering how to comply now.…
Continue Reading

It is the beginning of 2016, and American companies are anxiously awaiting news of whether or not a new “Safe Harbor 2.0” will emerge. In October of 2015, the European Court of Justice declared invalid Safe Harbor 1.0 in the Schrems decision. This had an immediate effect on any American company collecting personal data from the EU by removing the legal basis for this kind of data transfer. As of October 2015, consumer, client, and even employee data cannot be legally transferred to the US under the Safe Harbor Framework.

Fortunately, the data protection regulators (“DPAs”)recognized the turmoil this decision created within the business community on both sides of the Atlantic. As a result, the Article 29 Working Party (which is the convention of DPAs from each of the EU Member States) issued an enforcement moratorium on enforcement actions until the end of January 2016, so that they could assess the effectiveness of data transfer tools available. As part of this moratorium, the Working Party called on “…Member States and European institutions to open discussions with U.S. authorities in order to find legal and technical solutions”; and that the “current negotiations around a new Safe Harbor could be part of the solution.”…
Continue Reading

The annual conference of the world’s data protection regulators is a three day exercise, with half of the conference being “closed door” for the regulators only, and the other half being a series of side meetings and presentations, which report out to interested attendees the results of the closed door meetings. This is a good meeting to gain insight in the next year’s trends in data protection regulation and enforcement across the globe. While this conference happens every year, the events in the European Court of Justice and the impending completion of the new General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) made this year’s conference particularly interesting. Here are some of the insights which were developed during the conference:…
Continue Reading