California’s Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 – Get Ready for New GDPR Style Requirements in the US

At the end of June, the California legislature passed its Bill 375, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. The Act contains a number of concepts that would be familiar to those who are working to bring their companies and organizations into compliance with GDPR. The new law defines a category of “Personal Information” that radically departs from a traditional definition of Personal Data commonly found in various State Data Privacy Laws, which usually ties an individual name to other identifiers like social security number, account number, or other factors. Instead, the California Act defines “Personal Information” as information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. It does not, mercifully, include publicly available information, but it still comes closer to a GDPR-like definition of “personal data” than any other US law.

Read the full blog post.