Daniel Solove and Paul Schwartz write:
We recently released a draft of our new essay, Reconciling Personal Information in the European Union and the United States, and we want to highlight some of its main points here.
The privacy law of the United States (US) and European Union (EU) differs in many fundamental ways, greatly complicating commerce between the US and EU. At the broadest level, US privacy law focuses on redressing consumer harm and balancing privacy with efficient commercial transactions. In the EU, privacy is hailed as a fundamental right that trumps other interests. The result is that EU privacy protections are much more restrictive on the use and transfer of personal data than US privacy law.
Numerous attempts have been made to bridge the gap between US and EU privacy law, but a very large initial hurdle stands in the way. The two bodies of law can’t even agree on the scope of protection let alone the substance of the protections. The scope of protection of privacy laws turns on the definition of “personally identifiable information” (PII). If there is PII, privacy laws apply. If PII is absent, privacy laws do not apply.
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