Mrs. Harris danced around sensitive issues. With online privacy, she said, she wanted to find a balance between what’s good for businesses and protecting consumers. When asked about anti-trust enforcement, she said it was important not to be short-sighted. A state on the brink of bankruptcy, as California was then, “can not stand in the way of business growth and development,” she said.
That same month, David Drummond, then Google’s top lawyer, personally donated $ 6,500, the maximum allowed at the time, to her campaign. Google also stepped in another $ 6,500. Supported by technical money, Mr. Harris won one of the closest statewide races in California history, putting her career on track that now catapulted her to become the first Black woman on the presidential map of a major political party.
Ms. Harris rarely challenged the big tech companies after she became California’s attorney general.
Jamie Court, president of California-based Consumer Watchdog, said his group lobbied Ms Harris in 2011 to support legislation that would force companies to stop users’ online activity if they made it clear they did not want to be followed . They refused to sponsor the bill or support it, he said.
Two years later, Ms. Harris – and California introduced – sponsored a less stringent law that required companies to place privacy policies or follow up on unsolicited requests and what personally identifiable information they collect.
“They presided this era of great consolidation and power in the hands of these tech giants and they did nothing,” Mr Court said.
But supporters of Ms Harris said that when she did, her familiarity with the technology industry helped her bring the companies into action. Danielle Keats Citron, a law professor at Boston University, said she saw that first hand when she started in 2015 with Ms. Harris worked to combat so-called revenge pornography – a term used to post explicit images or videos of a person without their permission.
