Companies, including some of the largest in the country, are engaging in a last-minute push to amend the California Consumer Privacy Act before it goes into effect in four months, as a majority of companies predict they will not be able to comply with the law when they must start doing so on Jan. 1.
The California state legislature is only in session for two more weeks, so the lobbying efforts of companies like Facebook and Twitter are ramping up, even if it appears as though their chances of getting any changes to the law dwindle by the day. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter have formed a group called the Internet Association, which has been running ads in California warning individuals that websites which used to be free may no longer be so after the CCPA goes into effect.
Considered to be one of the country’s most onerous consumer protection laws, the CCPA will give individuals the right to ask for all of their personal information stored about them by companies for the preceding 12 months. The law gives consumers access to the information stored about them by companies and the right to request that information be deleted.
Meanwhile, 56% of companies that participated in a survey said they expect not to be compliant with the CCPA when it goes into effect in January. More than one-third said the cost of being compliant was too prohibitive, while 32% said they were waiting to see how the law is going to be enforced before putting their plans into place. On the problematic side, the remaining companies either did not think the law applied to them, did not know about the law, or did not think their organization is large enough to face fines for not complying.
