One of the world’s largest advertising firms is crafting a campaign to thwart a California bill intended to enhance people’s control over the data that companies collect on them.
According to emails obtained by POLITICO, the Interpublic Group is coordinating an effort against a bill that would make it easier for people to request that data brokers — firms that collect and sell personal information — delete their dossiers.
SB 362, known as the Delete Act, would require companies to delete all data on individuals upon request — including data purchased or acquired from third parties. This would shrink the trove of personal information they hold, such as browsing history, birthdates and past purchases. Data brokers compile this information to build profiles of people, which can be used to craft advertisements tailored to an individual’s preferences. But that also grants them access to some of people’s most sensitive details, such as whether they are pregnant or suffering from mental illness. The IPG emails reveal how an advertising company could use that same personal data and targeting capabilities to undermine a public policy proposal that threatens its bottom line.
The emails show an exchange between the company’s global chief digital responsibility and public policy officer, Sheila Colclasure, and other executives discussing what the firm can do to block the bill.
“We would like to mount an ‘opposition campaign’ using in-house digital advertising capabilities, targeting California,” Colclasure wrote in an Aug.14 email sent to others at IPG and reviewed by POLITICO.
Has there not been ample opportunity for such votes? It’s been 7 years since gdpr passed over in Europe, if we want to be generous and assume nobody was even aware of the possibility of such legislation prior. That’s plenty of time to have written and passed a copycat law, and California did, so would the lack of such laws elsewhere not demonstrate a lack of support?
Wait so your argument is that because we lag good ideas elsewhere they must not be good ideas? So by definition a place like South Africa should never have abolished apartheid because obviously if their people wanted it then they would’ve done it within 3 years of the first abolishment of such a system?
If someone wants to put it on a ballot, let them put it on a ballot and decide. If the will of the people is that their privacy is worth more than a companies bottom line, that is the choice of the people.
No, that isn’t my argument in the slightest. What’s good has absolutely fuck all to do with what’s popular or what the government passes. My point was that the choice of the people, agree with it or not, seems to be leaning towards not passing such laws in the US, as evidenced by the fact that, given ample time, they have chosen not to for the most part. Whether you support such laws or not, is the lack of them not also the choice of the people?