EU Privacy Directive — Coming To the US?

An anonymous reader writes "An article over at ComputerWorld implies that the EU Privacy Directive, or something like it, will soon be signed into law here in the USA. The author seems to think this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure. From the article: 'We've finally come to realize that self-regulation by industry hasn't worked. The states have stepped in, creating the same situation of conflicting regulation that led to the creation of the EU privacy directive. The only question now is if the law that comes out of Congress will be a small step strictly focused on breaches, such as S.239, or whether we take the bigger step of forming a permanent committee under the FTC to monitor privacy as outlined by S.1178. Either way, the U.S. is finally moving away from the fractured environment of the past and toward a comprehensive privacy strategy.' Is it time for a national privacy law or 'Privacy Czar', or are we better off letting things be?"

Comments

Re:Is it just me

[RedElf]

Hold up a second, they're just trying to be like Ceasar (except with bad spelling) too bad they didn't read the history books to see what happened to him.

The fallacy is that compliance = privacy

[Allnighterking]

All too often laws are enacted with the best of intentions only to show that compliance with the law is a hollow shell of the desired objective. Case in point is something like the CanSpam directive. By giving you a link to a page that had all the correct bells and whistles to appear to allow you to de-list yourself, when it actually de-listed you from one list and listed you on 40 others, is the probable end result.

How many times have you had a company ask for ridiculously invasive information for your protection . Similar results will be incurred here. Currently asking information is at best spotty in legality and because of this you have a certain level of push back available to you when they request it. (No I will not give my sons grade school his SSN) however once a law like this goes into play it creates an aura of safety that once an organization appears to comply with it, the loss of your personal data no longer is a high level of liability for them. As a result your privacy is reduced to a level of cookie cutter actions that never get questioned because, 'everyone knows it meets legal requirements'.