Europe Pressures U.S. Tech On Internet Privacy Laws

Demonstrators with Guy Fawkes masks protest changing privacy policies on March 31, in Vienna.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: And I'm Robert Siegel. It's time now for All Tech Considered.

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SIEGEL: Today, a new privacy system called Do Not Track. America's big tech companies are negotiating the details of the plan that would let people shield their personal data from websites. There's no deal yet, but privacy advocates inside the talks say one thing is striking: Every compromise is being weighed with Europe in mind.

NPR's Martin Kaste reports.

MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Jacob Kohnstamm is a European privacy regulator. He's been on a tour of Silicon Valley and his message to America's tech giants is respect European privacy rules or else.

JACOB KOHNSTAMM: Enforcement actions against them will be taken.

KASTE: Not only should people be allowed to block websites from collecting and keeping their data, he says, that should be the default setting on European browsers, at least. Talking from a phone inside the headquarters of Facebook, Kohnstamm is in no mood to let Americans decide everything about the Internet.

KOHNSTAMM: To say American companies rule this world could be a very dangerous sort of thinking.

KASTE: American companies are feeling the heat. Stu Ingis is a lawyer for the Digital Advertising Alliance.

STU INGIS: I can tell you, as somebody who's around these companies every day, that they're creating untold benefits to both our economy and to consumers. And it'd be a shame if the Europeans want to limit those benefits.

KASTE: That argument plays well in D.C., where politicians don't want to be accused of killing jobs or hampering innovation. The attitude is more adversarial in Brussels.

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KASTE: Take this public service produced by the European Commission. It shows people happily surfing the Web, buying things online. But when they hit enter, their clothes fly off. It's hard to imagine the U.S. government making an ad like that.

CHRIS DOCKSEY: The European approach to privacy is that it's potentially a very unequal relationship.

KASTE: Chris Docksey is director of the European Data Protection Authority. Though he says these are his personal opinions, not those of his office. He says Americans regard online privacy as take-it-or-leave-it. If you want, say, Gmail, you have no choice but to click I Accept.

DOCKSEY: Whereas in Europe, your consent has to be real and informed and there mustn't be disequilibrium. If there is, then the consent may be incapable of being given.

KASTE: Earlier this year, E.U. Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding announced new privacy legislation, which would impose hefty fines on rule breakers. And she also said this.

VIVIANE REDING: And it will make Europe the worldwide standard-setter for a digital market and for data protection.

KASTE: That's the last thing American companies want, especially in a global data-collection industry which they dominate, at least for now. If European rules become the global standard, says privacy law expert Jane Winn, then European companies may not be far behind.

JANE WINN: If somebody can seize control of global arenas, then their domestic industry gets a leg up, because they only have to cope with one system.

KASTE: Winn says Europeans have sincere cultural reasons for their tougher privacy rules, but they're also not opposed to gumming up the Americans' business model online, which trades free services for users' personal data.

WINN: The American companies feel an entitlement to collect this information. And so, culturally, it's hard for them to shift gears.

KASTE: The cheap data fueling American tech companies is sometimes compared to the cheap gasoline that used to fuel the American auto industry. Like Detroit, the argument goes, Silicon Valley is not likely to change its business model until it's forced to by events outside the U.S.

Martin Kaste, NPR News.

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