EFF presses for update to California privacy law

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is encouraging Californians to support a proposed update to a state law aimed at giving people greater access to the personal information that companies digitally store about them.

The bill, called the Right to Know Act, would require companies to provide people, upon request, with a copy of the personal information they collect about them. The measure would also require companies to share the names and contact information of the outside parties, such as data brokers and Web apps, they have shared people's data with during the last year. "The new proposal brings California's outdated transparency law into the digital age, making it possible for California consumers to request an accounting of all the ways their personal information is being trafficked — including with online advertisers, data brokers, and third party apps," Rainey Reitman, activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, writes.