California Begins Slow Launch of Nation’s First Online Privacy Protection Agency
The agency’s first task will be to turn the state’s broad privacy law into detailed regulations for industry, and it has asked the public, nonprofits and businesses to help guide its initial rules.
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California has begun building the California Privacy Protection Agency, the first government body in the United States with the sole job of regulating how Google, Facebook, Amazon and other companies collect and use data from millions of people, reports the New York Times. The agency will be a more than 30-person group with a $10 million annual budget to help enforce the state’s privacy law, which is among the most stringent in the country. It will be headed by Ashkan Soltani, a privacy expert who once served as the Federal Trade Commission’s top technologist.
The agency’s launch has already encountered challenges, including questions from privacy activists about whether its budget is substantial enough to police the world’s largest companies. Jennifer Urban, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was tapped by Gov. Gavin Newsom to lead the new agency’s five-member board. The agency has also posted jobs for a permanent general counsel, a director of public affairs, a senior policy adviser, and it has told the State Legislature that it hopes to pay roughly 34 employees in the coming year. The agency’s first task will be to turn the state privacy law, which is broad, into detailed regulations for industry, and it has asked the public, nonprofits and businesses to submit comments to guide its initial rules.
