EU Privacy Directive

[Theodor.SCHLICKMANN at BXL.DG13.cec.be]

Those who are affected in the first place are US companies who
are used to collect and process personal data from their customers
without any embarrassment. They will be excluded from
the European market, if they do not follow European Data
Protection rules. 

Until now the US goverment has decided to leave this matter 
to self regulation. However, US industry did not manage to 
come up with an appropriate codex. If industry
does not comply until the end of the year, FTC promised that
they will introduce a bill at congress which will comply with
European data protection standards. On the other hand, the US did
not even manage to adopt the Guidelines on the Protection
of Privacy and Transborder Flow of Personal Data by OECD.
The discrepancy in the US system is exposed by the fact that
general laws for data protection and privacy were avoided in
favour of specific laws for single areas or techniques.

Other countries, in particular those in Eastern and Central
Europe have, in spite of massive lobbying by D. Aaron, adopted
laws on data protection and privacy since they do not want
endanger their future participation in the EU.

T. Schlickmann