The California Privacy Protection Agency (“CPPA”) held two informational hearings on March 29, 2022 and March 30, 2022, in anticipation of its upcoming rulemaking later this year.  While the CPPA Board was present throughout the hearings, its members did not present any views as part of the program.  The speakers covered the following topics of note:

  • Opt-Out Preference Signals: Stacey Schesser (Supervising Deputy Attorney General, California Department of Justice) advocated heavily for the retention of the current California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) regulations addressing user-enabled global privacy controls.  Under the current regulations, 11 CCR § 999.315(c), a business that collects personal information from consumers online must treat user-enabled global privacy controls as a valid request to opt-out of the sale of personal information.  Schesser suggested that global privacy controls help operationalize the CCPA opt-out rights for consumers.  She also noted that the California Attorney General is currently actively enforcing the CCPA regulations on global privacy controls, and referred to the Attorney General's published enforcement case examples that included a business that failed to process opt-out requests submitted via a browser extension that signaled the global privacy control.
  • Opt-Out of Sharing: Lisa Kim (Deputy Attorney General, California Department of Justice) suggested that the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”) right to opt-out of sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising applies to real-time bidding in advertising auctions.  She suggested that businesses must give consumers the right to opt-out of these auctions.
  • Right to Know: Kim also discussed the right to know under the CCPA and CPRA.  During this discussion, she used the example of a website link with which a consumer has interacted as a “specific piece of information” under the statute.  She did not address, however, how this reading of the statute relates to the CPRA's instruction to the CPPA in § 1798.185(a)(14) to define this term “with the goal of maximizing a consumer's right to access relevant personal information while minimizing the delivery of information to a consumer that would not be useful to the consumer, including system log information and other technical data.”
  • Dark Patterns: Jennifer King (Privacy and Data Policy Fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University) referred to the use of toggle switches for CCPA Do Not Sell requests as a so-called “dark pattern.”  Notably, she also acknowledged that rules on such user interfaces are confined in the CPRA to consent interfaces.
  • Privacy Risk Assessments: Gwendal LeGrand (Head of Activity for Enforcement Support and Coordination, European Data Protection Board) described the requirements for privacy risk assessments under the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

The CPPA next intends to hold hearings in April.  Members of the public can indicate interest in speaking at these hearings through this Stakeholder Session Request Form.  This sign-up form will remain open until two weeks before the hearings, for which dates have not yet been set.

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