A technology perspective on worldwide privacy regulations

In this paper we provide an overview of the worldwide privacy regulatory landscape from a technology perspective. We focus on data-centric definitions of personal information and then examine how these differ across different regulatory frameworks, such as the ones issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Union, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the U.S. state laws. We discuss some of the challenges facing privacy regulatory bodies and involving leading-edge technologies, such as event data recorders, social networking Web sites, radio frequency identification, and national identification cards. Finally, we connect the regulatory environment with common security technologies that may assist organizations in complying with privacy requirements.