Privacy Digest

Google sees urgent need for global privacy rules: National regulators need to agree on a basic set of global privacy protections for the Internet within the next five years, a senior executive with Google said Monday.

Peter Fleischer, the company's global privacy counsel, said three quarters of countries had no Internet privacy standards at a time when the amount of sensitive personal and financial data on the Web was soaring.

Google--itself criticized for the threat it poses to personal privacy--says the company's business agenda, the world economy and the Internet could suffer unless more is done to ensure basic privacy on the Web.

"What we're saying is that the Internet is making this particularly urgent and that the Internet develops at a different speed than the speed at which traditional lawmaking and policy-making discussions take place," Fleischer said.

"I think this is something that needs to happen within five years. That's just us saying what we think is realistic as an urgent action," he told Reuters in an interview.

Google, unhappy with what it calls a patchwork of conflicting privacy rules in some countries and a complete lack in many others, is pressing for action amid criticism about the enormous access to personal information on the Web.

"I think everyone has acknowledged that the status quo is not good enough any more," said Fleischer.

(Read Original Article - Via Privacy : Tech news from CNET .)