Student Test Taker Privacy Protection Act: end-to-end encryption.

Existing law, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) , imposes various obligations on businesses with respect to personal information, as defined. The California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, approved by the voters as Proposition 24 at the November 3, 2020, statewide general election, amended, added to, and reenacted the CCPA. The CCPA requires a business to inform consumers of the categories of personal information to be collected and the purposes for which the categories of personal information are collected or used and whether that information is sold or shared. Existing law, the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act, prohibits an operator, as defined, from, among other things, disclosing a K–12 student's personal information, except as specified. Existing law, the Student Test Taker Privacy Protection Act, prohibits a business providing proctoring services in an educational setting from collecting, retaining, using, or disclosing personal information except to the extent necessary to provide those proctoring services and in other specified circumstances. This bill, beginning July 1, 2027, would require a business providing those proctoring services to a school district, county office of education, or charter school for classroom- or course-based exams to use end-to-end encryption, as defined, for those purposes. The bill would define "end-to-end encryption" for these purposes to mean a security method where data is encrypted on the sender's device and remains encrypted until it reaches the intended recipient's device and is unreadable by any other party, including the business providing proctoring services. The California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 authorizes the Legislature to amend the act to further the purposes and intent of the act by a majority vote of both houses of the Legislature, as specified. This bill would declare that its provisions further the purposes and intent of the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020.