Harry Chambers of OneTrust gave a far-reaching overview of the worldwide state of privacy legislation this morning. Chambers covered a ton of topics, but I’m going to focus on proposed changes to the California Invasion of Privacy Act, or CIPA.
As Fisher Phillips notes, this is not a new act. And that’s the problem.
“CIPA was originally enacted in 1967 to combat traditional wiretapping and eavesdropping, primarily in the context of telephone communications. It was never designed to address the complexities of the digital age or regulate how businesses track user interactions on the internet.”
But that didn’t stop the lawyers. As Chambers noted, a ton of lawsuits tried to apply 1967 law to modern use cases, including (Fisher Phillips) “routine website technologies such as cookies, pixels, search bar/form, chatbots, and session replay tools.”
Heck, back in 1967 cookies made you high. Whoops, that’s brownies.
You can imagine how California technology businesses felt about this. Chatbots as illegal wiretapping? Ouch.
Enter California SB 690 to stop what Fisher Phillips called a “shakedown” (settle or you’ll go to court). It proposed to align CIPA with the “commercial business purposes” definition under CCPA as amended.
On June 3, the California Senate unanimously approved SB 690.
But submission to the California Assembly is delayed:
“On July 2, the author of SB 690, State Senator Anna Caballero (D-14), announced she was pausing SB 690, holding it in the Assembly until at least 2026. Caballero cited ‘outstanding concerns around consumer privacy,’ and acknowledged continued opposition from consumer privacy advocates and attorneys’ groups.”
So the lawsuits can continue until morale improves.
Bredemarket 