DICCIÓ I TRADUCCIÓ

On January 1, 2020, a sweeping statute took effect in California that addresses the right to informational privacy.

Specifically, the California Consumer Privacy Act

creates new rights for consum-ers to control access to and dissemination of the pconsum-ersonal infor-mation businesses collect and maintain about them.

The Act, which reportedly “gives nearly 40 million people in [California] the strongest data privacy rights in the country,” was introduced on the initiative of Alastair MacTaggart, Founder and Chair of Californians for Consumer Privacy.

MacTaggart did so after several internet

370 See WASH. REV.CODE § 26.26A.903 (2018); see also Raegen Rasnic, State’s Parentage Act Gets Major Makeover, KING COUNTY B.ASS’N (Feb. 1, 2019), https://www.kcba.org/For-Lawyers/Bar-Bulletin/PostId/690/states-par-entage-act-gets-major-makeover.

371 Cal. A.B. § 2684, ch. 876 (2018).

372 Vt. H.B. § 562, Act 162 (2018).

373 2017 Parentage Act Enactment Map, UNIF.L.COMM’N, https://www.uni- formlaws.org/committees/community-home?CommunityKey=c4f37d2d-4d20-4be0-8256-22dd73af068f (last visited Mar. 17, 2020).

374 See CAL.CIV.CODE §§ 1798.100–199 (West, Westlaw current with ur-gency legislation through Ch. 3 of 2020 Reg. Sess.).

375 Id.

376 California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): Background on the CCPA &

the Rulemaking Process, CAL.DEP’T JUST., https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa (last visited Mar. 23, 2020) (soliciting public comments to rule modifications by March 27, 2020).

377 Letter from Alastair Mactaggart, Bd. Chair & Founder of Californians for Consumer Privacy (Sept. 25, 2019), https://www.caprivacy.org/post/a-letter- from-alastair-mactaggart-board-chair-and-founder-of-californians-for-consumer-privacy (reporting that a new and stronger initiative was filed on November 19, 2019, that is slated to appear on the California general election ballot in November 2020). As Mactaggart explained,

service providers had blocked proposed state legislation that would have reigned in the commercial exploitation of users’ personal in-formation.

What this new law comes down to is giving consumers the right to take back control over their information from thousands of giant corporations. This is about power: the more a company knows about you, the more power it has to shape your daily life.

That power is exercised on the spectrum ranging from the be-nign, such as showing you a shoe ad, to the consequential, like selecting your job, your housing, or helping to shape what can-didate you support in an election.

Id.; see Letter from Alastair Mactaggart, Bd. Chair & Founder of Californians for Consumer Privacy, to Cal. Att’y Gen. Transmitting the Proposed Cal. Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (Nov. 4, 2019), https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initia-

tives/pdfs/19-0021A1%20%28Consumer%20Privacy%20-%20Ver-sion%203%29_1.pdf.

378 The California Consumer Privacy Act defines “personal information”

broadly:

“Personal information” means information that identifies, re-lates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. Personal information in-cludes, but is not limited to, the following if it identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could be reasonably linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular con-sumer or household:

(A) Identifiers such as a real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, account name, social security number, driver's license number, passport number, or other similar identifiers.

(B) Any categories of personal information described in subdi-vision (e) of Section 1798.80.

(C) Characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law.

(D) Commercial information, including records of personal property, products or services purchased, obtained, or consid-ered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies.

(E) Biometric information.

(F) Internet or other electronic network activity information, in-cluding, but not limited to, browsing history, search history, and information regarding a consumer’s interaction with an internet web site, application, or advertisement.

(G) Geolocation data.

The Act authorizes the California Attorney General to adopt reg-ulations after seeking public comment.

As this Article went to press, the proposed regulations have been published for notice and comment.

Among other things, the regulations would bar a busi-ness from using personal information for any purpose other than those the business disclosed to the consumer at the time of collecting the data.

In addition, a consumer would have the right to “opt out”

from the sale of the consumer’s personal information,

to know what kind of personal information a business collects and main-tains,

and to request deletion of the consumer’s personal infor-mation.

(H) Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar in-formation.

(I) Professional or employment-related information.

(J) Education information, defined as information that is not publicly available personally identifiable information as de-fined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. Sec. 1232g; 34 C.F.R. Part 99).

(K) Inferences drawn from any of the information identified in this subdivision to create a profile about a consumer reflecting the consumer's preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abili-ties, and aptitudes.

CAL.CIV.CODE § 1798.140(o)(1) (emphasis added). Certainly, this definition ap-pears to be sufficiently broad to encompass genetic information, at least to the extent it implicates relational privacy interests of individuals who reside within the same “household” as the individual whose “personal” information has been collected and maintained by a business. See id.

379 CAL.CIV.CODE § 1798.185(a) (“On or before July 1, 2020, the Attorney General shall solicit broad public participation and adopt regulations to further the purposes of this title, including, but not limited to, the following areas . . . .”); see also California Attorney General Publishes Privacy Regulations, Seeks Public Comment, EPIC.ORG (Feb. 11, 2020), https://epic.org/2020/02/california-attorney-general-pu.html.

380 See California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): Background on the CCPA

& the Rulemaking Process, supra note 376 (soliciting public comments to rule modifications by Mar. 27, 2020).

381 Chapter 20. California Consumer Privacy Act Regulations: Text of Initial Proposed Regulations, CAL. DEP’T JUST., https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/ag-web/pdfs/privacy/ccpa-proposed-regs.pdf (last visited Mar. 17, 2020) (to be cod-ified at CAL.CODE REGS. tit. 11, § 999.305(a)(3)).

382 Id. (to be codified at CAL.CODE REGS. tit. 11, § 999.306).

383 Id. (to be codified at CAL.CODE REGS. tit. 11, § 999.308(b)(1)).

384 Id. (to be codified at CAL.CODE REGS. tit. 11, § 999.308(b)(2)).

It remains to be seen whether other states will follow Califor-nia’s lead by enacting state statutes that regulate the collection, maintenance, and retention of personal and relational information.

Even more speculative is how future courts may interpret and apply state privacy statutes to address the increasingly complex relational privacy issues generated by digitized “personal” information.

E. European Union General Data Privacy Regulation