Success, but Challenges Remain
We do not have to look far beyond our own homes, cars or workplaces to see how technology serves us in a modern world. It has an incredible ability to make our daily tasks more convenient, our lives more efficient, and our hobbies more enjoyable. It is equally true that those benefits come with tradeoffs and risks to our personal rights and freedoms.
We had monumental success in securing data privacy rights in California (in 2018) with the passage of AB 375. However, that success is not the "end all, be all" in this space.
In many ways, we established a baseline of rights, not the ceiling. I have since heard concerns from the tech community about the law’s practical implication. I do not believe this justifies curtailing any of the rights established, but I am interested in engaging with that community, and consumer privacy groups, to help clarify this new law while maintaining strong data privacy rights for consumers.
I am also interested in working on other issues, such as artificial intelligence, which stand to shift our lives and require that we prepare our state for those changes in a responsible and responsive fashion. This necessitates a delicate balance between establishing appropriate public policies that will neither stifle innovation nor leave constituents without the necessary tools and protections to shift with the technologies and times. To reach a thoughtful conclusion as to what that balance might be, we need to have those conversations now, not 10 years from now.
