The California Constitution provides for a right of privacy. Existing law prescribes a variety of consumer privacy protections, including requiring a business that owns, licenses, or maintains personal information about a California resident to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the information, and authorizes a customer injured by a violation of this provision to institute a civil action to recover damages. Existing law also requires a manufacturer of a connected device, defined as a device capable of connecting to the Internet, to equip the device with a reasonable security feature or features that are appropriate to the nature and function of the device, appropriate to the information it may collect, contain, or transmit, and designed to protect the device and any information contained therein from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure.

This bill would prohibit a smart speaker device, as defined, or a specified manufacturer of that device, from saving or storing recordings of verbal commands or requests given to the device, or verbal conversations heard by the device, regardless of whether the device was triggered using a key term or phrase.