Will New York Follow In California’s Footsteps?

The New York Privacy Act was introduced last month.  Like California’s CCPA, it gives consumers more power over their data, but in addition to that, it would require companies to put their customer’s privacy before their own interests.  I am sure that there will be a huge lobbying effort by special interests.

While the sponsor is still looking for cosponsors in the lower house, he thinks he already has enough votes to pass it in the Senate.

The Committee on Consumer Protection is scheduled to hold a hearing this week.

Like California’s law, this bill would allow people to find out what data companies are collecting, who they are sharing it with, get it deleted, make companies correct incorrect data and stop companies from sharing the data with third parties.

One difference from the California law, is that this bill allows from consumers to sue companies over privacy violations.  One compromise that was made when the California bill was passed was to change that to only allow a private right of action in cases where there was a breach.  Here, a private right of action would exist for any violation.

Another big difference is that while the California law only applies to companies with revenues over $25 million (or a couple of other situations), this bill would apply, like Colorado’s law does, to any company of any size.

Obviously, the big companies (Facebook,. Google and others) and their lobbyists (the Internet Association) are more than just freaking out.    They are saying that keeping customer’s data private is “unworkable for businesses” which really means that it messes with their business model and fails to give residents meaningful control over their data, which makes no sense at all.  Are they suggesting that their current business model already gives people meaningful control over their data?  That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case.

While I certainly agree that a law like this messes with the business models of some companies that have built a business around selling your data, if those businesses have something that people find valuable, most people will recognize that this is a reasonable trade.

What is required is transparency and that is something that folks like Google and Facebook fight, because they know that for many people, it is not worth the trade.

This is far from law, but definitely a bill to watch.

The name of the bill is NY S 5642.

While this bill may not pass in its current form, it seems like the handwriting is on the wall and smart businesses will start to understand privacy concerns and rework their business models to take that into consideration.

Information for this post came from Wired (registration required).

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