Take the e-commerce privacy dispute between the U.S. and Europe. The stakes are high, and it's not just American companies whose e-business bonanzas hang in the balance. According to e-commerce experts, customers feeling secure about their transactions in cyberspace is key to the future of cybershopping from Peoria to Sydney to Prague. What's decided here will influence Internet commerce and privacy rights for consumers for years to come. From the get-go, privacy experts had been hoping that the talks between the U.S. and EU would commit U.S. companies to giving consumers grounds for lawsuits, should those privacy pacts ever be violated.
Trouble is, the talks are going nowhere fast.
Negotiators from both sides of the Atlantic had hoped to agree on a set of voluntary privacy guidelines in time for a Dec. 15 U.S.-E.U. summit in Washington. This is anathema to U.S. companies. Rather than adhere to the directive, the U.S. is trying to negotiate a set of voluntary guidelines that would let Americans collect information on cybershoppers, promising just enough protections to satisfy the Europeans. Literally interpreted, says Peter Swire, the White House's coordinator of privacy policies, the EU directive would bar a American business exec from flying from Paris to New York with the names and phone numbers of European clients in his laptop. European officials say such fears are overwrought.