A Privacy Bomb Is About to Be Dropped on the California Economy and the Internet

I'm open to the proposition that there's something horrible here but 1) the linked article doesn't seems to able to find any and 2) it does do a good job of selling me on the idea that this law is better than the ballot initiative we'll get if this doesn't pass.

So...what are we meant to do with this info? Call up our local legislators (if we live in CA) and tell them to pass it? (Or...not pass it? I'm honestly confused what the author wants.) There's no call to action here I can see, probably because there's nothing meaningful to do, in which case...maybe take a few more days and make a readable analysis of whatever ends up passing? Because this just feels like fearmongering.

How does this work when someone requests that a company delete all invoices related to them?

I am a bit wary of something that pops up out of the blue, looking helpful - "never let a good crisis go to waste" and all that. And I'm generally skeptical of "making more laws". But what are the specific flaws in this one?

The indictment seems to be focused on time, meaning there could be flaws we cannot find. But given this is an adversarial process, it also means there (hopefully) hasn't been much of a chance for every entrenched interest to compromise with each other at the people's expense!

The tech giants will eventually benefit from this type of legislation, because after the initial shock it will just help them consolidate. For instance (contrary to the linked FUD), "mom and pop [retail] stores" already don't have to worry about handling customers' information, as that's encapsulated by the payment processors.

So now every little business that wants to use surveillance against their customers will be pushed to go through some centralizer (eg Google). Though from the perspective of the unwillingly surveilled, this isn't really that bad either - eg gaining the ability to actually break up with clingy and histrionic Faceboot.

The big question is if this ability to delete the files being kept about ourselves will remain unneutered, or whether the surveillance industry will eventually succeed in eroding it under some guise of indefinite consent or nebulous mingling of orthogonal purposes.

Another big test will be if the law can be successfully applied against say Experian.

I think the cat is already out of the bag. We saw how engaging the public works with the legislature. California net neutrality is a recent case in point.

I would argue that the being frozen thing is a good thing. In fact, I think we need to make this proposition system stronger. Once a proposal meets certification, the applicant or anyone may not withdraw it. This I think reduced chances of reckless gambling behavior.

The California initiative process, introduced around 1911 by crusading progressive governor Hiram Johnson to curb a venal legislature in hock to special interests, worked as designed in this case. Of course special interests adapted and learned to coopt the process, as the sugary-drinks industry is doing with its own initiative to arm-twist the State into preempting local soda taxes like Berkeley’s or San Francisco’s.

The privacy initiative took 2 years of preparation, not 7 days: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/29/california_data_pri...

Calling direct democracy an "unwelcome workaround to our democratic institutions" and saying it needs to be "eliminated" is a bit much. If the legislature was doing its job properly and giving the people what they want, they couldn't be motivated to support an initiative like this.

Or one of those stakeholders or a chairman beholden to those stakeholders would have pulled the same move that just happened with CAs net neutrality bill and used the process to poison-pill it.

not a claim I would believe without a lot of evidence.