TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Europe Zips Lips; U.S. Sells ZIPs - New York Times

Europe Zips Lips; U.S. Sells ZIPs - New York Times

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Sun, 7 Aug 2005 14:15:43 -0400

By ERIC DASH

IF the information is not already missing, 2005 might be recorded in
the databanks of history as the year of the consumer privacy breach.

So far, American companies including financial services giants like
Bank of America, Citigroup and MasterCard, and national retailers like
DSW shoes and Ralph Lauren Polo, have announced data compromises. All
told, the personal information of more than 50 million consumers has
been lost, stolen and even sold to thieves.

Why is this happening here, and not, say, in Britain, Germany or
France? One reason may be that every other Western country has a
comprehensive set of national privacy laws and an office of data
protection, led by a privacy commissioner.

The United States, by contrast, has a patchwork of state and federal
laws and agencies responsible for data protection.

"In Europe, the question has been settled: citizens have strong legal
rights," said Joel R. Reidenberg, a Fordham University law professor
who is an expert on international data privacy rules. "In the United
States, we basically have a mess, and we are still trying to sort it
out."

More fundamentally, these two systems for dealing with data arise from
a cultural divide over privacy itself. In broad terms, the United
States looks at privacy largely as a consumer and an economic issue;
in the rest of the developed world, it is regarded as a fundamental
right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/weekinreview/07dash.html?ex=1281067200&en=0917edc4d24f6c28&ei=5090

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