🧠 How a Regulator Thinks About Privacy

Hello all, and happy Thursday!

This week, I wanted to draw your attention to a recent interview I conducted with none other than Tom Kemp, Executive Director of the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA). It’s rare to get the chance to pick the brain of a regulator, let alone the foremost privacy enforcer in the US, and I did my best to ask the questions that subscribers to this newsletter would be most interested in!

We covered everything from the CPPA’s enforcement philosophy to Tom Kemp’s journey to becoming executive director, the new DROP system, and more.

Give it a listen here.

Best,

Arlo

New from Osano

Podcast: How CalPrivacy Balances Enforcement, Transparency, and Innovation with Tom Kemp of the California Privacy Protection Agency

With California expanding enforcement, launching the DROP system, and signaling what comes next for automated decision-making and data brokers, privacy expectations for businesses are becoming clearer—and harder to ignore. We sat down with Tom Kemp, Executive Director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, to learn what’s next for the US’s only privacy enforcement agency.

Listen here

Events

Online Event: Navigating Identity in a Cookieless, Compliant World

Attending MarTech this year? Osano’s Senior Vice President of Product, Amar Ramakrishnan, will be speaking on Wednesday, March 4th, from 11:50 AM - 12:30 PM EST on a panel centered on the competing forces of personalization and privacy, and how marketing professionals can develop consent-driven relationships while still delivering relevant experiences.

Find out more and register

Top Privacy Stories of the Week

Attorney General Bonta Announces $2.75 Million Settlement with Disney, Largest CCPA Settlement in California History

California Attorney General Rob Bonta recently announced a settlement with Disney, resolving allegations that the company violated the CCPA by failing to fully effectuate consumers’ requests to opt out of the sale or sharing of their data across all devices and streaming services associated with consumers' Disney accounts. Under the settlement, Disney must pay $2.75 million in civil penalties and must implement opt-out methods that fully stop Disney’s sale or sharing of consumers’ personal information.

Read more

Meta Patents AI Trained on Your Data that Can Post After You Die

Meta has secured a patent for an AI system capable of simulating a user's social media activity, including posts, comments, and interactions, after they have died. By analyzing data like your messages and likes, the AI creates a digital persona for you, potentially simulating audio or video calls. Experts caution that this "grief tech" is an ethical minefield, raising concerns about consent, the psychological impact on grieving families, and the potential misuse of digital clones for commercial gain.

Read more

Europe’s Privacy Watchdog Launches ‘Large-Scale’ Probe into Elon Musk’s X

The European Union’s data privacy watchdog has launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over sexualized images generated by the social media site’s AI chatbot, Grok. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said that it has opened a “large-scale” inquiry into X concerning these images and whether X has complied with the GDPR.

Read more

South Carolina Becomes Fifth State to Enact Age-Appropriate Design Code Law

Earlier this month, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed the Age-Appropriate Code Design (SC AACD) into law, becoming the fifth state to enact an age-appropriate design code law after California, Maryland, Nebraska, and Vermont. The law, which went into immediate effect upon the governor’s signature, adds to the steadily increasing patchwork of teens’ and children’s online safety legislation in the US.

Read more

Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pax­ton Sues Snapchat Over Children’s Safety Allegations

Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Snap, Inc. for failing to adequately warn parents and consumers about inappropriate material on the platform and the app’s addictive design. The lawsuit alleges that creators of Snapchat knowingly misrepresented the app’s safety to parents and consumers by promoting it as safe for children while simultaneously exposing users to dangerous and mature content.

Read more

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