Author: Tom Kemp
Published: May 08, 2025
Hi, this is Tom Kemp, the new Executive Director of the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA). I am deeply honored and humbled to lead the agency responsible for helping Californians have more control over their personal information.
California is one of the few states with the inalienable right to privacy enshrined in its Constitution. This means your right to privacy can’t be taken away, given up, or transferred — it’s something you inherently have as a resident of California.
We were also the first state to pass a comprehensive privacy law — the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) — which puts you in charge of your data. You have the right to ask businesses what data they’ve collected about you and why, request that they delete your personal information, opt-out of the sale and sharing of your data, and more. See this brochure for more details on all your privacy rights here in California.
California has the strongest set of consumer privacy rights in the United States. But many of us don’t have the time, expertise, and/or patience to exercise our rights, given the thousands of organizations that collect and process our personal data. Too often, exercising one’s privacy rights becomes a chore requiring constant repetition. Privacy should be easy and able to be done at scale.
Making that a reality is a key focus for the Agency and one of my top priorities as Executive Director. We’re already working on several initiatives to ensure Californians can easily exercise their privacy rights.
One example is the Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform — or DROP — which will go live next year. DROP will offer a single portal to submit deletion and opt-out requests to hundreds of data brokers, which are third-party companies that collect and sell your personal information and don’t have a direct relationship with you. This system is being developed thanks to the Delete Act. Just as the CCPA was the nation’s first comprehensive privacy law, the Delete Act is the world’s first law enabling consumers to exercise their deletion rights at scale.
I also encourage you to consider using an opt-out preference signal (OOPS). OOPS lets you configure your browsers to tell businesses not to sell or share your data when you visit their websites. With an OOPS, a consumer doesn’t have to make an individual opt-out request at each business’s website. Using an OOPS, such as Global Privacy Control, is another example of an easy-to-use and scalable privacy tool.
Many of you reading this blog post may already know that you have groundbreaking privacy rights here in California, which is fantastic. But I also realize that exercising those rights can be challenging when dealing with countless websites. That’s why the CPPA is dedicated to making it easier for you to operationalize your privacy rights in a way that is simple and efficient.
Check back here for updates as we continue working to make privacy easy and scalable for all Californians.