The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) is pushing back against a proposed ballot initiative—the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018—that would make sweeping changes with regard to consumer privacy and extend the act’s coverage to companies that conduct substantial business in California (even if located out of state) and that collect personal information from California consumers.
Pursuant to the initiative, “personal information” includes identifiers such as real name and alias, postal address, and Internet protocol address, as well as information relating to characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law, commercial information (including property records or consuming histories), biometric data and Internet activity data (search history, for example, or interaction with an application), and geolocation data.
The initiative would grant consumers the right to request all personal information collected about them—both online and off—for the prior 12 months, as well as information on all third parties that purchased the data. Consumers could also opt out of any sale or the sharing of their personal information with a third party.
The ballot initiative contains significant penalties. The failure to comply with an opt-out request could cost a company from $1,000 up to $7,500 per violation. Similar fines are applicable in the event of a data breach.
To fight the ballot initiative, the ANA is working with the California Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups as part of the Committee to Protect California Jobs.
“We urge our members and other associations to join the list of groups who are publicly opposing this misguided proposal,” Dan Jaffe, the ANA’s group executive vice president of government relations, wrote in a recent blog post.
To read the ballot initiative, click here.
To read the ANA’s blog post, click here.
Why it matters: In addition to the California Chamber of Commerce, the ANA’s efforts to combat the ballot initiative have included heavy hitters such as AT&T, Comcast and Google, all of which contributed $200,000 each to a campaign finance committee opposing the proposed legislation.
