Metaverse Law will be giving a zip talk and participating in a Q&A panel on Thursday, November 14 at the Phoenix Club in Anaheim, CA about Data Protection and Cyber Security.
The event itinerary includes registration at 11:00AM – 11:45AM, followed by lunch and a seminar which conclude at 1:30PM.
Registration details can be found at http://www.socalpcc.org/lock-it-or-lose-it.html.
Image Credit: Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
On October 10, the California Attorney General released proposed guidelines to implement the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), which goes into effect in January 2020. One of the provisions that surprised many was a new requirement that privacy notices given to consumers “[b]e accessible to consumers with disabilities” and “[a]t a minimum, provide information on how a consumer with a disability may access the notice in an alternative format.” [Note: the AG’s regulations are not final, and interested parties may submit comments about them before December 6, 2019 at a series of public hearings, by mail, or by email.]
The requirement to provide the privacy notice in a format that is accessible to people with disabilities is consistent with recent trends towards website compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Whether out of a desire to advance equity or to comply with the spirit or letter of accessibility laws, we see more businesses and website operators making earnest attempts to make their websites accessible to the broadest audience possible.
Unfortunately, the AG did not provide very much guidance on how businesses could make their privacy notice or websites more accessible. Luckily, several organizations doing work in this area, including the W3 Web Accessibility Initiative, Stanford Online Accessibility Program and Berkeley WebAccess, have put resources online for designers, developers and content creators.
While not exhaustive, the following is a list of fairly straightforward best practices distilled from other lists that businesses and website operators can implement to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities:
1. Use headings correctly to organize the structure of your content
2. Pay attention to color contrast
3. Images should include alternate text in the markup/code; complex images should have more extensive descriptions near the image
4. Provide transcripts for podcasts
5. Websites with videos should provide visual access to the audio information through in-sync captioning
6. Sites should consider using skiplinks
Millions of internet users have special needs, disabilities and impairments that make certain websites difficult or impossible to access and use. By designing your website with these challenges in mind, you can ensure that it is welcoming to as many users as possible.
Image Credit: 3D Animation Production Company from Pixabay
California Attorney Xavier Becerra unveiled highly-awaited regulations on October 10, 2019 to enforce the California Consumer Privacy Act, a sweeping new privacy law set to take effect on January 1, 2020.
The text of the CCPA proposed regulation is available here. As a few highlights, the proposed regulation:
Individuals and businesses interested in shaping the final CCPA regulations can attend public hearings or send comments by mail or email to the following:
The public hearing dates and locations are as follows:
| Public Hearing Dates | Locations |
|---|---|
|
Sacramento December 2, 2019 10:00 a.m. |
CalEPA Building Coastal Room, 2nd Floor 1001 I Street Sacramento, CA 95814 |
|
Los Angeles December 3, 2019 10:00 a.m. |
Ronald Reagan Building Auditorium, 1st Floor 300 S. Spring Street Los Angeles, CA 90013 |
| San Francisco December 4, 2019 10:00 a.m. |
Milton Marks Conference Center Lower Level 455 Golden Gate Ave. San Francisco, CA 94102 |
| Fresno December 5, 2019 10:00 a.m. |
Fresno Hugh Burns Building Assembly Room #1036 2550 Mariposa Mall Fresno, CA 93721 |
More information about the public hearings and proposed CCPA regulation is available on the Attorney General’s CCPA website.
Image Credit: Pettycon from Pixabay
This article is Part 2 of 3 in a series exploring proposed federal privacy laws and constitutional concerns of privacy laws in the United States. Part 3 will discuss the constitutional challenges facing a proposed federal privacy law.
In the first part of this series, we examined several federal privacy bills proposed this year, as Congress eagerly tries to pass a single harmonizing federal law. The issue of preemption continues to divide Republican and Democrat lawmakers, however, with the former in favor of an express provision allowing preemption stricter state privacy laws such as the CCPA and the latter largely against such a provision.
Regardless of whether a federal law passes, with an express preemption provision, state privacy laws are still at risk of constitutional attacks. There are two primary ways that a state privacy law may be challenged: (1) invalidation under the Dormant Commerce Clause, and (2) invalidation under First Amendment grounds. State legislators contemplating the passage of their own privacy laws will need to consider these constitutional issues in the drafting phase, or risk facing opposition on constitutional grounds.
Continue Reading Will the CCPA and Other State Privacy Laws Face Constitutional Attack?[Originally published in Orange County Lawyer Magazine, May 2019, Vol. 61 No.5.,by Lily Li and Matthew Wegner; Image Credit: kmicican from pixabay.com]
In 2020, the nation’s toughest data privacy law will take effect in California. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) imposes harsh restrictions on companies seeking to sell consumers’ data, including statutory penalties for any breaches of data. This legislation was spurred by public outrage against the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal and Equifax, Target, and Yahoo data hacks, and reflects a growing trend to protect consumer data privacy.
As with so many legislative and judicial movements in California—for example, the Save-On decision, which ushered in a wave of wage-and-hour class actions in the early 2000s, or Business & Professions Code section 17200, which before Proposition 64 was tacked-on to countless consumer class actions—the CCPA is likely to usher in a host of new class action litigation as plaintiffs (and their attorneys) seek to recover statutory damages for data privacy violations.
Continue Reading Privacy Rights in Class Action Lawsuits
