Library of Congress Report on Online Privacy Laws

The Library of Congress has published 2 reports comparing the data protection laws of the European Union and of selected foreign countries (including Canada):

"They describe the constitutional foundations of data privacy and the statutory requirements that must be met in order for data to be collected, used, and transferred to third parties. They also explain the concepts of informed consent, transparency, and data minimization, and describe the rights and remedies of data subjects, particularly the rights of access, rectification, and erasure."

"In addition, the reports examine whether the existing laws on data privacy are adequate to deal with online privacy in an era of rapid technological development and globalization, and with an increased scale of data sharing and collecting."

The reports were prepared for the recent annual conference of the American Association of Law Libraries that took place in Boston, July 21-24, 2012.