Privacy in the digital world: Towards international legislation

Abstract

In today’s digital world, personal privacy has become the number one issue for consumers [9]. Consumers' confidence in personal privacy is directly affecting and limiting the growth of the Internet commercial development. Therefore, it has become a necessity to address the consumers privacy concerns for the interests of the parties involved. Examples of the different ways of penetrating the consumers' privacy are reviewed. The national and international efforts to formulate regulatory and self-regulatory programs to protect the consumers' privacy are demonstrated. The different privacy enhancing technologies are presented. The problems and shortages of the current national and international consumers' privacy protection regulatory effort including privacy enhancing technologies are addressed. The argument of the need for an international efforts and the proposed role of the United Nations (UN) towards enforced international privacy legislation is established. The complexity and the multi dimensional factors that affect the proposed international legislation are discussed.