Information Privacy Law
Information privacy laws cover the protection of information on private individuals from misuse or intentional or unintentional disclosure. Over 80 countries and independent territories have now adopted comprehensive laws including nearly every country in Europe and many in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. Map The US is notable for not having adopted a comprehensive law on data protection but rather having adopted limited sectoral laws in some areas.
These laws are based on Fair Information Practices, first developed in the United States in the 1970s by the Department for Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). The basic principles of data protection are:
- For all data collected there should be a stated purpose
- Information collected by an individual cannot be disclosed to other organizations or individuals unless authorized by law or by consent of the individual
- Records kept on an individual should be accurate and up to date
- There should be mechanisms for individuals to review data about them, to ensure accuracy. This may include periodic reporting
- Data should be deleted when it is no longer needed for the stated purpose
- Transmission of personal information to locations where "equivalent" personal data protection cannot be assured is prohibited
- Some data is too sensitive to be collected, unless there are extreme circumstances (e.g., sexual orientation, religion)
Read more about Information Privacy Law: Canada, Europe, United States, "Safe Harbor" Privacy Framework
Famous quotes containing the words information, privacy and/or law:
“The family circle has widened. The worldpool of information fathered by the electric media—movies, Telstar, flight—far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad can now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world’s a sage.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-in house, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.”
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)
“It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait.”
—Max Beerbohm (1872–1956)