Google touts Asian privacy model

What? Protecting personal data, Beijing style?

By Lucy Sherriff • Get more from this author

Posted in Law, 14th September 2007 11:31 GMT

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Google is recommending that global privacy regulators take a leaf out of Asia's book when they are drawing up the rules.

The firm is set to make its proposals at a meeting of policy makers in France today, according to Reuters. It says that a variety of Asia-Pacific countries have already agreed a set of broad principles, and that the rest of us should join in.

Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, issued a statement ahead of the meeting saying: ""We can do better, when the majority of the world's countries offer virtually no privacy standards to their citizens or to their businesses."

This random approach to privacy is bad for citizens, he will say, because there is no clarity about what rights people have under various different regimes.

Instead, the world (plus dog, presumably, although canine privacy may be a whole new ball game) should sign on to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Privacy Framework, which to Fleischer's mind, offers the best balance of private and commercial interests.

You can read about the framework here. ®

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