This in turn, will speed their economic development, integration into the world economy, and will provide support for sensible e-commerce rules. We must remain constantly vigilant, however, because there are other countries that would insert the WTO into e-commerce issues as authentication, commercial contracts, privacy, consumer protection and content. Just eight months after its launch, the GBDE drew upon the recommendations of over 700 companies and trade associations to reach consensus on self-regulatory and market driven codes of conduct. This includes issues such as IPR, taxes and tariffs, and personal data protection. Outside the WTO, we are working on other important e-commerce issues such as personal data privacy and consumer protection.
Most countries have consumer protections, to one degree or another.
So, I am afraid we are facing a long, arduous process of consensus development over the right ways to protect consumers without killing electronic commerce. Data privacy protection is already better developed than other areas of online consumer protection. This is gratifying because privacy is essential to the future of electronic commerce. People do not want to post their personal information on the Internet without adequate guarantees of confidentiality. The Clinton Administration and Vice President Gore have been particularly active in strengthening our data protection laws.