The topic of privacy is important. With the recent media coverage on data breaches and different privacy “standards” (for example, Google in Spain), this article is timely. It provides a brief rundown of why privacy laws around the world are different, for example, privacy is a right in the European constitution. The article then goes on to talk about data privacy in the US, Europe, and Japan, and how they differ.

It was nice to see that more countries now have data privacy laws, and that the US and Japan are pushing for newer privacy laws. However, it was disconcerting that the new US privacy law did not make it out of committee.

The article would have been even more interesting if the author had covered the consumer point of view, for example, do consumers care about their privacy, and is there a push from society?