California lawmakers unanimously passed a consumer privacy bill Thursday after a week of negotiations and a deal between tech companies and privacy rights advocates.
The bill is a watered-down version of a more expansive proposal by Alastair Mactaggart, a San Francisco real estate developer who spent more than $3 million on his campaign to qualify the measure for the ballot.
"If it goes through, it's certainty," Mactaggart said before the vote. "It's done. ... It's kind of what I set out to do."
If Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bill, which he is expected to do, Californians can hold companies accountable for potential abuse of their data. Members of the public could ask a business to delete information they have on them. Upon request, businesses that sell consumers' information would have to disclose the categories of information they collect.
The bill also allows individual consumers to sue companies for up to $750 if there is an unauthorized breach of their non-encrypted personal information, despite being written with broader language to give tech companies more legal cover.
Republican State Sen. Jim Nielsen, criticized the bill, saying he feared it would empower lawyers to file frivolous lawsuits against major companies. He also criticized the process through which it was crafted.
"Here are just a handful of people negotiating something that the majority of legislators will know nothing about," Nielsen said, noting they only had three days to read it. "We are accepting the behind-closed-doors negotiations of various interests."
Despite his concerns, Nielsen voted for the bill. Brown's signature will trigger Mactaggart's move to pull his initiative from the ballot.
The California Consumer Privacy Act would go into effect in 2020.
