BILL NUMBER: S7695B
SPONSOR: GOUNARDES
 
TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the general business law, in relation to establishing
the New York child data protection act
 
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
The purpose of this bill is to protect the privacy of children and young
adults by restricting digital services from collecting or using the
personal data of users they know are under the age of 18 without
consent, and prohibiting or requiring safeguards for the sale or disclo-
sure of the personal data of users they know are under the age of 18.
 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section 1 creates a new article 39-FF titled The New York Child Data
Protection Act. The article prohibits online sites from collecting,
using, sharing, or otherwise processing any personal data of individuals
under the age of 18 without informed consent. It also prohibits disclos-
ing any data of minors to third parties unless there is a written bind-
ing agreement.
This act covers conduct that occurs wholly or partly in New York State
and authorizes the Attorney General to bring proceedings or special
actions when online platforms violate this law.
Section 2 provides a severability clause.
Section 3 provides the effective date.
 
JUSTIFICATION:
Children now live much of their lives online. They learn online, social-
ize online, and shop online. They make mistakes online, and they discov-
er who they are online. Right now, there's nothing stopping websites or
other digital services from monitoring every minute detail of our chil-
dren's online lives, creating profiles of every decision our children
make or avoid. This information can be used against our children's
interests, including by precisely crafting and targeting advertisements
children are uniquely ill-suited to resist, or by haunting children with
records of teenage experiences as they move from childhood to adulthood.
Children should be able to freely experience the online world without
concern of omnipresent monitoring and recording. They should be free to
be children, without needing to second guess the long-term consequences
of every decision. This bill will help children in New York to have that
experience again, through two main provisions:
First, this bill will require privacy be the rule, not the exception.
If a digital service knows a user is a minor or the service is primarily
directed to minors, it will default to only being able to use that
child's data in ways that are strictly necessary to provide the service.
It won't be able to sell that data, or use it in ways that the user-or
user's parents, for children under thirteen-don't affirmatively say that
they want.
Second, once information has seeped into the larger ecosystem it can be
almost impossible to track down and remove, so this bill will require
that digital services that use third-party service providers contractu-
ally restrict those third parties from using the personal data of minors
except for specified purposes, with accompanying safeguards to ensure
compliance.
This bill will help parents and teens browse the internet without
restrictions while preserving their privacy.
 
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
None
 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
This bill has minimal fiscal impacts on the state or localities.
 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Effective one year after the bill is signed into law.