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Slide 13 of 25
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Slide 13 of 25
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Just as business is now often global, the question of privacy has become an international concern. The European Union passed a privacy directive with an implementation date of October, 1998. By that date, each European Union country had to have in place privacy laws that met the requirements of the directive, including the creation of a privacy agency with enforcement capabilities.
The EU directive is aimed at data protection and includes the private as well as the governmental sector. Any company or institution that requests personal data from individuals must comply with the privacy law. The directive expressly states that companies within countries that do not have adequate data privacy protection for consumers cannot request any information from residents of the European Union. That has caused a great deal of strife between the US and the EU because the United States does not have consumer data protection laws and therefore does not satisfy the EU data protection requirement. |