From AdExchanger
7 Things You Should Know About California’s Privacy Watchdog
By Allison Schiff
There will soon be 15 – count ‘em 15 – state privacy laws on the books in the US. (Kentucky’s privacy bill is sitting on the governor’s desk waiting for a signature as we speak.)
But in the absence of comprehensive federal privacy legislation, many companies treat California’s privacy law – the nation’s strictest – as a de facto standard...
1. Ashkan Soltani is the CPPA’s executive director
Before signing on as the agency’s first employee in 2021, Soltani helped architect the California Consumer Privacy Act and the CPRA.
He was previously chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission and a senior advisor to the White House during the Biden administration on technology issues, including privacy, AI and big data.
Soltani also spent years as an independent technologist and privacy researcher. He helped investigative journalist Julia Angwin with her research for the infamous “What They Know” series, which ran in The Wall Street Journal between 2010 and 2013 and shined a light on the pervasiveness of online tracking.
All of that is to say, Soltani knows how ad tech works and where the bodies are buried.
Ashkan Soltani (MIMS 2009) has previously served a brief stint as a Senior Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and as the Chief Technologist for the Federal Trade Commission.
