Now that the 2020 election season is drawing to a close, Californians should consider the implications of the ballot measures that they passed, including Prop 24. The campaign discussions surrounding many propositions, including 24, were eclipsed by the furor over the presidential and congressional campaigns, as well as the campaigns for local officials.
Prop 24 is a densely-worded 52-page ballot initiative mainly backed by real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart that centers around data privacy.
Prop 24 aims to remedy loopholes of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a landmark law on data privacy, passed in 2018. CCPA endowed certain rights regarding personal information including the right of knowing if a business collects it and how it is used, the right to delete it and the right to opt-out of the sale of it.
Data privacy recently has come to the forefront of many people’s minds for several reasons, most notably because of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data scandal, when the information of one-fourth of American Facebook users, according to Facebook, was used for targeted political advertising during the 2016 election cycle.
During the subsequent 2018 Congressional hearings on Cambridge Analytica’s use of the data they mined from Facebook and the use of that data to influence the 2016 elections, testimonies from some of the biggest tech CEOs produced viral sound bites. New York’s Democratic Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio Cortez’s grilling of founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg ultimately caused further public discord on regulations of privacy, misinformation and censorship.
In her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff, a business professor emerita at Harvard, addressed yet another cause for concern surrounding data privacy. Zuboff described Google as a “pioneer of surveillance capitalism,” which is the intensification of tech companies aggressively targeting consumers with the use of personal information. Zuboff implicated Google as “an invasive species in a landscape free of natural predators,” claiming that as a pioneer in this new form of business, there is not enough regulation of the company’s actions.
California’s new Proposition 24 attempts to provide further regulation against these “invasive species” — or big tech companies — that profit from using their users’ data maliciously. Prop 24 permits correcting inaccuracies and limits the sharing of personal data. In addition, the proposition plans to create the California Consumer Privacy Agency to enforce the new consumer privacy laws and hand out harsher penalties for violations of those laws.
Andrew Yang, former Democratic presidential candidate and founder of Humanity Forward, thinks otherwise.
In an interview with Kristen Size of ABC7 News, Yang expressed how big an issue data privacy is for children. According to Yang, “time spent, ad revenue and engagement levels” are the only things these companies care about, not the consumer’s well-being. Yang noted that these companies don’t care if children are “addicted” to screens and social media or if there are “surges in anxiety and depression” in children because their usership helps the companies’ bottom line financially.
Jim Steyer, the founder of Common Sense Media, is another notable backer of Prop 24. Steyer shared a similar sentiment to Yang regarding privacy, “Young people shouldn’t be normalized to surveillance. You should be free to grow up, make mistakes and find your voices.”
Steyer highlighted the fact that data privacy laws are bipartisan. “You see special protections for kids and teens now in Republican bills. In Democratic bills. In bipartisan bills,” he said. Though the fight for privacy is not all roses: people across the political spectrum cannot agree on how to approach and achieve better protection. “No on Prop 24” chairman and privacy advocate Mary Stone Ross congratulated the privacy movement on the passing of Prop 24 but also critiqued the initiative, saying, “we need to give [CCPA] a chance to work before making costly, potentially harmful changes that undermine existing law.”
Prop 24 also drew criticism from organizations like Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and the ACLU of Northern California. They believe Prop 24 may be a pathway for many loopholes, including companies that charge consumers a premium for privacy. According to these groups, the proposition goes against the statement in the California Constitution that the right to obtain and pursue privacy is inalienable. The ACLU of Northern California says it will be an extra burden for “working families and marginalized communities” because they will have to put extra worry, money and effort into something perceived as a right.
The passing of Prop 24 now furthers the discussion about more sweeping and comprehensive data privacy policies in California and across the nation.
