Privacy law is a broad area of law that deals with the collection, use, and dissemination of personal information. It also includes the protection of trade secrets and other confidential information.
The CCPA, passed in California in 2018, is the first comprehensive general privacy law. It gives consumers the right to know what data 성범죄변호사 entities are collecting and to whom they are selling it.
Vertical Laws
The data privacy laws that regulate how businesses collect and use personal information differ across industries and regions. Some are designed to limit the amount of personal information shared with third parties. Others are intended to address the impact of a data breach, including improper financial activity or compromised social media accounts.
A privacy policy is a document that explains the personal data Mapbox collects, why it is collected and how it will be used. This document should include details about the company’s compliance with data protection regulations and any other relevant policies.
Many states and the federal government have established a wide variety of laws to protect consumers’ personal information. In addition, some organizations are establishing voluntary codes of conduct for their employees and contractors. These codes often provide better protection because they are created by those with the greatest knowledge of and sensitivity to industry practices and conditions. They also tend to be revised more quickly than legislation and can be applied more broadly than legislation can.
The history of the U.S. approach to vertical nonprice antitrust issues can be described as checkered. The different branches of the federal and state governments have struggled over time to define the line between permissible and impermissible conduct in this area. The courts have emphasized the importance of effects analysis in determining whether vertical restraints violate antitrust law.
Horizontal Laws
Although it is easy to be seduced by the trivial Cooley explanation of privacy as ‘the right to be let alone’, the concept of privacy encompasses a broad range of socio-economic, political, psychological and legal concerns. It is an issue which reaches into the lives of private citizens, businesses, civil society groups, public institutions and all other parts of our communities. Privacy is the bedrock of many human rights, and without it, confidence in democratic systems will collapse. This will have far-reaching ramifications, ranging from loss of business to the broader loss of trust in government and other public institutions.
Consequently, privacy laws typically involve a combination of sectoral and general provisions. It is not uncommon for the latter to contain elements of the former, such as the recently-enacted California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
These laws also generally impose compliance obligations on businesses that process personal information. These can include mandatory disclosures, creating policies and procedures, establishing mechanisms for consumers to request data access, etc. In addition, many privacy laws include private rights of action that give impacted individuals the right to sue businesses for damages.
This adds another layer of complexity to privacy law that requires careful consideration. As we look ahead, it will be important to continue to explore how privacy laws are put into practice – to understand what is working and what is not. This will be crucial to understanding the impact of new privacy regulations on a diversity of companies and organizations.
Federal Law
In the United States, federal law has very limited impact on privacy. Most existing laws are sector specific, and even these laws vary in scope and implementation.
For example, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act imposes limited privacy protections against the sale of consumer financial information, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act provides some protections against pretexting, or obtaining personal data under false pretenses. The federal government also requires agencies to conduct Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) for systems that collect or use personally identifiable information.
Several state laws impose additional requirements and rights for consumers, including California’s CPRA (which was amended in 2023 to make it more comprehensive) and Colorado’s privacy law. The latter contains similar provisions as the CPRA, Virginia’s law, and the EU’s GDPR but differs in some key details, such as the lack of a cure period and the absence of a new enforcement agency.
Various proposals in Congress have been floated, including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s Data Protection Act and Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)’s Putting Consumers First Privacy Act. These bills and others have broad support and bipartisanship, which could signal that a general federal privacy law is afoot. Compliance with varying state and federal laws can add significant costs and risks to businesses, so a comprehensive and consistent approach to privacy may help alleviate the burdens of compliance.
State Law
State attorneys general oversee privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage, safeguarding, disposal and use of data collected from residents. These laws typically cover sectors such as financial (Gumby-Leach-Bliley Act), medical (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), education (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and children (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act).
State legislators have been nudged to pass sectoral and comprehensive consumer privacy legislation to stay ahead of international data regulation, like the European Union’s GDPR, that has prompted companies to hire attorneys and privacy professionals and establish robust compliance programs. As a result, privacy law in the United States is evolving at a much faster rate than in many other countries.
A growing number of states have passed comprehensive consumer privacy legislation. California’s Consumer Privacy Act of 2022 is widely considered the strongest such legislation in the U.S. It gives consumers the right to know what personal information businesses collect about them, who they share it with and how, and to opt-out of their data being sold. Other states with comprehensive data privacy legislation include Oregon, Tennessee and Delaware. Colorado’s law grants consumers rights, such as the right to confirm or correct personal information and access a list of third-party disclosures, while Virginia’s Consumer Data Privacy Act (CDPA) contains GDPR-like individual rights but has lower revenue thresholds for applicability.