International Privacy and Data Protection Laws

Over the last two decades, a growing number of countries have enacted comprehensive privacy and data protection legislation. Many of these countries have modeled their laws on the European Union’s Data Protection Directive. The European Union’s Member States have enacted their own laws with specific requirements for processing and transferring personal data. Additionally, many of these laws specifically regulate the gathering of information in the workplace. The ability to monitor in the workplace may depend upon a number of laws, not just the privacy and data protection legislation.

The following section examines the laws of a number of countries around the globe. In many instances, a country may not have enacted general privacy legislation. In other cases, there may be numerous laws and regulations governing the collection and processing of personal information. Accordingly, it is important to understand how these laws may impact a company’s ability to implement data loss prevention.

The following section provides an overview of the State Laws on Interception of Communications and their requirements. Links are provided to the relevant laws. Additionally, the following topics are covered:

• Title:  This is the name given to the legislation at the time of enactment or how it is currently referred to in the relevant state 
• Citation: This is the formal citation to the specific law and a hyperlink.
• Summary: This provides a brief overview of the legislation.
• Data Covered: This identifies the specific data covered by the legislation.
• Industry: This identifies the specific industries or sectors that are covered by the legislation.
• Penalties: This identifies the sanctions provided for failure to comply with the law’s requirements.