California’s Proposition 24 won over the majority of California, with around 56% of votes out of 11 million votes counted on Wednesday, November 4, 2020, reports the Associated Press. The said measure is aimed at expanding and tightening internet privacy laws.
According to the Los Angeles Times, data security concerns stemmed from the 2016 elections. During this time, the political ad targetting campaigns by Cambridge Analytica and attacks on the Democratic Party’s email servers surfaced, revealing harmful online data security and data harvesting practices.
With voters in the most populous state voting in support of Proposition 24, this is slated to heighten the enforcement of internet privacy regulations. At the same time, this will tighten some of the loopholes that tech giants and big businesses have always found a way around over the years.
Based on the article released by the Los Angeles Times, this new measure will create a new state agency to ensure the implementation of the law. This is expected to take root in 2023.
With California being the first state to ever pass a digital privacy law under the California Consumer Privacy Act, Proposition 24 aims to address the current loopholes in place by providing a new law called the California Privacy Rights Act.
While the former law passed in 2018 provided consumers and online users with the data being collected about them and have the ability to delete or opt-out of the sale of personal information, the latter differs by giving consumers the right to prevent their data from even being obtained or processed in the first place, notes the Los Angeles Times.
Moreover, the Associated Press reveals that the maximum fines that will be levied for companies who violated kids’ privacy laws or that were involved in the collection and sale of this information will be tripled.
In a statement, chairman of the Californians for Consumer Privacy, sponsor of Proposition 24, and real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart said, “We are at the beginning of a journey that will profoundly shape the fabric of our society by redefining who is in control of our most personal information and putting consumers back in charge of their own data.”
“I’m looking forward to the work ahead and the next steps in implementing this law, including setting up a commission that is dedicated to protecting consumers online,” said Mactaggart.
The real estate developer also said that this entails being “able to stop businesses from using our most intimate, most personal information – our health information, our religion, our sexual orientation, our race.”
