Brill Sees Benefits to EU's Rights-Based Privacy Approach

connected with protection from the government, as the U.S.’s Fourth Amendment speaks to, she said. The U.S. has fundamentally a “harm-based approach” to privacy enforcement, she said. “Frankly, I would like to see more emphasis on the rights side,” Brill said. “There’s more that we can do, whether it’s enacting a consumer privacy bill of rights or whether it’s implementing some more protections around, for instance, data brokers or student privacy.” Andrea Glorioso, counselor for the digital economy at the delegation of the EU to the U.S., is “not convinced” of such “deep-rooted differences” between the U.S. and Europe and cited a bigger gap between them and other “large” countries. “It’s very important that we keep the channels of communication open,” he said. Brill agreed that there is more in common ultimately and said “openings” exist across the Atlantic. “I see a ... new European Commission, that is trying to deal with some legacy issues, particularly around safe harbor, and they’re working very hard to get over the end line,” she said, anticipating there are consumer protection issues where the EU can cooperate with U.S. down the road. Brill cited the governments of countries in Europe, including in Germany, where there’s “an effort to really gain much more of a nuanced perspective when it comes to things like the Internet of Things, when it comes to big data, when it comes to privacy.” Google Public Policy Director Adam Kovacevich “would suggest there is a global playbook” on these issues emerging, he said on the same panel. But there is “global creep of ideas that are not in that playbook” in areas such as Latin America and Asia Pacific, he said. “'Right to be forgotten’ I think we’d put in that category,” he said, referring to discussion of it within Mexico and worries of the possibility there that it could be “abused by elites trying to withhold information from ordinary citizens.” Brill cited encouraging signs on data interoperability. “The Europeans really do want to solve the safe harbor problem,” she said, citing other interoperability mechanisms under development. “I’m not sure I’ll see the trans-Atlantic interoperable mechanism converging with the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Corp.] one, the one governing the Asian and Pacific economic areas. I think they’ll be different but I do think there will be flows that will be able to occur as a result of both mechanisms. And binding corporate rules may actually end up being one of the lynchpins between the two.”