Hello, I'm David Plott, Emlex's managing editor for Asia, coming to you today from our Bureau in Hong Kong.

If you're a newcomer to Emlex's podcast series, a very warm welcome.

If you're a returning visitor, welcome back.

This week, Hong Kong has been playing host to a major gathering of data protection officials.

The International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners opened here on Monday.

Officials from more than 70 countries are attending. Also here is

Emlex's chief digital risk correspondent, Mike Swift from our San Francisco Bureau. He's here

with us now. Welcome to this podcast, Mike. It's great to be here, David. Mike, this conference

is arguably the biggest event on the calendar for the data protection community.

Now, one issue that's come up repeatedly has been the different approaches taken by regulators in Europe and the U.S. toward the issue of privacy.

What have you heard about that this week?

What are those differences and why do they matter?

Yeah, David, the key difference is between treating privacy as a fundamental right as Europe does

versus treating privacy as an economic right with more of a goal towards spurring commerce and innovation as the United States does.

And these are two fundamentally different approaches.

They matter because you get different results.

It's an article of faith in Silicon Valley that the reason why YouTube,

Facebook, and Twitter were all founded and grew in America is because the United States has

taken a more hands-off approach to privacy regulation and has passed, the laws that they

have passed have essentially given many internet platforms free rein for liability for

things that are posted on them. Europe, probably because of its history, decided that it wanted more of an emphasis on privacy as a fundamental human right.

And that's an important distinction.

...