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SAN FRANCISCO - Google, the world's largest internet company, will propose at a meeting of international policymakers in France that national regulators agree on a basic set of global privacy protections.
Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, will use a regional UNESCO conference in Strasbourg as a forum to call on countries to adopt as a global standard a set of privacy principles agreed to by a variety of Asia-Pacific countries.
He specifically mentioned New Zealand in a list of countries with desirable approaches to privacy.
Speaking to reporters by phone today from France, Fleischer said it was vital for the health of the internet, the global economy and Google's own business agenda to move beyond the current patchwork of conflicting privacy rules.
"We can do better, when the majority of the world's countries offer virtually no privacy standards to their citizens or to their businesses," Fleischer plans to say, according to prepared remarks provided to reporters.
"The minority of the world's countries that have privacy regimes follow divergent models," he will say in his speech to UNESCO. "Citizens lose out because they are unsure about what rights they have given the patchwork of competing regimes."
In recent months, the Silicon Valley company has stepped up its push for changes in government policies as well as industry self-regulation in order to fend off criticism over the unprecedented access to personal information the Web provides.
Because Google's stated mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible, the company has come under fire for the threat its services pose to personal privacy, starting with just a basic Google.com web search.
A recent move to acquire online advertising tools supplier DoubleClick Inc has put Google under increased scrutiny by US regulators concerned by its growing power in online advertising and the mounds of data on Web surfing habits Google stores.
Fleischer said the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Privacy Framework represents the best balance of principles governing the use of personal data in commercial contexts.
The APEC Privacy Framework seeks to harmonize the privacy perspectives of global economic powers such as the United States and China along with both European and Asia traditions reflected in the policies of Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, Fleischer argues in his speech.
The framework's nine principles focus on preventing harm to the privacy of individuals, safeguards on data collection, notification of users, access and correction of inaccurate data and the commercial uses of private information.
- REUTERS
