Small Businesses Concerned About CPPA Draft Rule Changes
Several people spoke out about how the California Privacy Protection Agency's draft rule changes to the data broker registration regime (see 2503050020) will affect small businesses, during the CPPA’s public meeting Friday. Ahead of the meeting, the agency released draft rule changes that support the state’s upcoming data-deletion mechanism (see 2502270066).
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“Our businesses are highly concerned about the agency findings and the recent standardized Regulatory Impact Assessment, which estimates direct costs" to businesses and consumers of "about $3.5 billion and a potential job loss of 106,000 employees,” said Nate Russell, representing the Alliance to Preserve California's Innovation Economy. “These regulations disproportionately harm small businesses, which are the backbone of our economies."
A small business owner noted "unfairness around the [data broker] fee that was imposed" where small firms "are paying the same fee as a company that’s going to be making” hundreds of millions of dollars. He hoped a sliding scale could be implemented.
Tasia Kieffer, on behalf of Los Angeles County Business Federation, called the board out for proposing regulations the public opposes. “At the agency's February 19 meeting, nearly 80% of the verbal public comment oppose the proposed regulations,” she said. “That overwhelming opposition reflects serious concerns from those who will be directly impacted, and as regulators, you have a legal responsibility to align with both public and legislative intent when crafting rules. Yet these proposed regulations failed to do so.”
Zane Witherspoon, CEO of a startup that helps companies with data compliance practices, said privacy worries are a reason high data broker registration fees may not be a good idea. Raising prices -- and deterring companies from registering -- "is really, really impactful on consumer privacy,” he said. Witherspoon added, "As a fan of privacy and as a believer in data rights," he's worried that "funding the opt-out system that already exists is actually detrimental to the privacy of Californians and people across the country, because they still don't know where to go to exercise their opt-out and data deletion rights.”
Following the public comment section, Jennifer Urban gave the chairperson’s update, in which she announced that the 2025 Data Broker Registry is live on the CPPA website (see 2502250002) and the agency’s first annual report was released (see 2502260014).
The group also went into a closed-door session on several occasions to discuss appointing an executive director and chief privacy auditor; once during the meeting Thursday and twice during the session Friday.
This was board member Brandie Nonnecke’s first CPPA meeting since she was appointed to the board (see 2502040005), replacing Vinhcent Le (see 2502030042).