If California’s data privacy law that is to take effect at year’s end is already scaring the pants off Big Tech, then the pending data privacy bill in New York is like Godzilla coming out of the water.
Issie Lapowsky filed this report in Wired:
The New York Privacy Act, introduced last month by state senator Kevin Thomas, would give residents there more control over their data than in any other state. It would also require businesses to put their customers’ privacy before their own profits. The bill is still seeking a cosponsor in the state assembly, but Thomas says he is confident that he has majority support in the senate and hopes to pass the bill this summer. The Committee on Consumer Protection, which Thomas chairs, is scheduled to hold a hearing on the bill Tuesday.
With it, the Empire State is poised to become the next battleground in the fight for state privacy laws. California became the first state to pass such a law last year with the California Consumer Protection Act; industry groups and consumer advocates have been sparring over its language ever since. Businesses argue that the CCPA is overly broad and that complying with different laws in every state is unworkable, preferring instead a lighter touch regulation at the federal level.
The New York Privacy Act bears some similarity to the California law. Like the CCPA, it would allow people to find out what data companies are collecting on them, see who they’re sharing that data with, request that it be corrected or deleted, and avoid having their data shared with or sold to third parties altogether.
But the New York bill, as it’s currently written, departs from the California model in significant ways. While the California law leaves enforcement to the state’s attorney general, the New York Privacy Act would give New Yorkers the right to sue companies directly over privacy violations, possibly setting up a barrage of individual lawsuits. Industry groups vehemently opposed a similar provision—also known as a private right of action—in California, and they succeeded in driving it out of the bill when it was finally signed into law last year. And while California’s law applies only to businesses that make more than $25 million annual gross revenue, the New York bill would apply to companies of any size.
