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To ring in the new year, California’s own Tom Meyer whipped up a cartoon about the state’s new data privacy law, which took effect Wednesday.

Before you commit to resolutions and reinvent yourself for the new decade, look back on the biggest news stories that Meyer satirized last year, ranging from a record number of horse deaths at racing tracks to the first photograph ever taken of a black hole and Pacific Gas & Electric’s bankruptcy declaration.

Front and center, though, is Meyer’s latest, which focuses on how Bay Area tech companies will reckon with the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, passed in 2018 amid data scandals involving Equifax, Facebook and company. The Associated Press is calling the new bill the “biggest U.S. effort yet to confront ‘surveillance capitalism.’”

Meanwhile, our editorial board is cautiously optimistic on the imperfect law. But how does that affect you? According to our editorial board and the bill’s author, the law also known as AB 375 would:

• Give internet users control over their personal information by requiring providers to obtain “opt-in” consent before they can use, disclose, sell or allow others access to customer’s personal information.

• Require that broadband providers maintain reasonable security protection so information can’t be collected by a third party.

• Give users the right to compel companies to delete private data that they collected on individuals.

• Prohibit companies from selling data about children under the age of 13 without a parent’s consent.

For more political cartoons, CLICK HERE