AGENDA 21 RADIO

BY CHRISS STREET NEWPORT BEACH, CA

Facebook dropped opposition to the California Consumer Privacy Act initiative after its CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled on privacy by Congressional Committees for two days

CBS’ San Francisco TV affiliate broke the story that Facebook withdrew its opposition to the voter sponsored Consumer Privacy Act initiative expected to be on California’s November ballot, just after Zuckerberg finished 10 hours of tough questioning from the Senate Judiciary and Commerce on Tuesday and then the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday.

A Facebook spokesman told CBS, “We took this step in order to focus our efforts on supporting reasonable privacy measures in California.”

Despite the loss of Facebook support, the Committee to Protect California Jobs that opposes the Privacy Act told Variety in a statement that it still has support from the Chamber of Commerce and will continue to oppose Internet regulation “limiting our choices, hurting our businesses, and cutting our connection to the global economy.”

Breitbart News reported two weeks ago that the Facebook scandal over selling customers’ deepest secrets for huge amounts of cash had accelerated signature-gathering efforts for the “Privacy Act” to qualify for California’s ballot.

San Francisco real estate developer Alastair MacTaggart personally put up the first $1.4 million necessary to form Californians for Consumer Privacy, and then launch an initiative that the California Attorney General described as: “Establishes New Consumer Privacy Rights; Expands Liability For Consumer Data Breaches.”

The measure would require businesses to clearly display a button on their website that allows California Internet users the ability to click, “Do Not Sell My Personal Information.” Clicking the button would launch a form to permanently opt-out. Failure to honor opt-out requests would allow consumers or public agencies the right to sue businesses for security breaches of consumers’ data, even if the consumer cannot prove financial injury.

MacTaggart told Breitbart News that he had expected to face stiff opposition from behemoth corporate types such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, but was surprised when a state campaign contributions report released on Feb. 27 revealed that Facebook and Google had joined AT&T, Verizon and Comcast by each making initial donations of $200,000 to the ‘Committee to Protect California Jobs.’

Unaware in February of the scandal that would soon rock Silicon Valley tech giants, MacTaggart called Facebook and Alphabet to learn why companies that claim to do no evil were opposed to transparency and fair play regarding selling and sharing their personal data. The companies did not respond to MacTaggart’s calls.

Privacy Act supporters around the state must collect 365,880 valid signatures by April 24, 2018 to qualify for the November ballot. But MacTaggart believes the campaign will need about 500,000 signatures to withstand challenges to the validity of initiative signers.

Signature gathers are telling MacTaggart that the combination of the privacy scandal still mushrooming and Zuckerberg dominating the news cycle, the only registered voters not interested in signing the California Consumer Privacy Act are folks in too much of a hurry