Bart Lazar Quoted in Legal Bisnow
"5 Key Points on Privacy"

Seyfarth Shaw Intellectual Property partner Bart Lazar was quoted in Legal Biznow on April 5 in an article about social networking in light of the White House's recently released guidelines designed to improve consumer privacy.

Bart suggested five key insights, drawing from the 62-page issued guidance. They include:

1. The President is calling for collaboration among industry, privacy advocates, and consumer protection agencies to develop enforceable codes of conduct; it can be seen as a partial win for industry in that the President is moving for codification of codes of conduct into which industry will have input.

2. The FTC and state AGs also win: it's a strong endorsement of the FTC and state AGs as the means of direct enforcement.

3. The Administration is trying to align the U.S. with the laws of the EU and other countries, a good step towards the adoption of global privacy governance and codes of conduct.

4. New privacy frameworks could result in improving data flows and reducing costs for US and international businesses. Currently, the EU deems US privacy laws as inadequate. Because of that, the US negotiated a "Safe Harbor" that U.S. companies can use to transfer personal data from the EU to the U.S. By constructing a privacy framework that is comparable to the EU's, it is possible that the EU will conclude U.S. laws are adequate, cutting the need for the Safe Harbor or extra levels of concern (including administrative time and legal expense).

5. The Administration is supporting national uniformity for privacy laws and database security breach legislation. Right now there are many differences in state database security breach, privacy, and security laws and regulations which is very costly to U.S. business.

Click here to read the full article: http://www.bisnow.com/washington_dc_legal_news_story.php?p=23018