Second California Data Law Prompts Ad Industry Appeals

The state of California has passed Proposition 24, a law expanding and reinforcing its CCPA privacy act - leading to calls from the country's advertising industry for legislation at the federal level.

The CCPA, in force since January, allows Californians to learn what information has been collected about them by companies, to have it deleted, and to prevent its sale to third parties. Proposition 24 will take effect only in 2023, but will make it even harder for companies to draw on data about consumers' race, ethnicity, health, or finances for advertising purposes; will close loopholes allowing continued targeting of ads to consumers who have opted out; and establishes a new state agency to enforce different privacy laws.

Leigh Freund, President and CEO of the self-regulatory group Network Advertising Initiative, spoke for many in the ad industry when she said yesterday: 'Every American deserves the same privacy rights, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission rather than a balkanized collection of state privacy regulators'.

Real-estate businessman and privacy campaigner Alastair Mactaggart, a leading figure in the inception of the laws who has since spent millions lobbying for the passing of Proposition 24, said this week: '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'.