For anyone following the field of privacy policymaking, the past two years have seen a flurry of activity unsurpassed in any other legal arena. Fittingly, the first reform process to come to fruition is that of the OECD Privacy Guidelines, which date back to 1980 and contain the first internationally agreed upon iteration of the now ubiquitous Fair Information Privacy Principles (FIPPs). Together with the expected result of the major reform processes in the U.S. and EU, the revised guidelines, slated to be launched later today on the OECD website and with a reception at the Canadian embassy in Washington, DC, are set to become the second generation of information privacy laws. As such, it is important to assess what has changed since their inception more than 30 years ago. In this installment of Privacy Perspectives, Omer Tene, who served as rapporteur for the Expert Group advising the OECD, examines the potential impact of the new guidelines.
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