The forum on Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has approved an initiative to help ensure cross-border data privacy protection among its members.
The initiative is designed to enhance the protection of consumer data that moves between the United States and other APEC members, at a time when more consumer information is moving across national borders.
President Obama and representatives from the other APEC economies this week endorsed the APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules at a meeting in Hawaii. The privacy system is a self-regulatory code of conduct designed to create more consistent protections for consumers when their data moves between countries with different privacy regimes.
In addition to the U.S., the 21 members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Edith Ramirez noted that the global flow of data raises significant consumer protection issues.
“With personal information now moving around the world in the blink of an eye, we need pragmatic ways to bridge the gaps between different legal systems and privacy regimes. The APEC privacy rules have the potential to significantly benefit companies, consumers, and privacy regulators and move us closer to global interoperability of privacy regimes,” she says.
Ramirez has been active in the FTC effort within APEC since she joined the agency in 2010.
Companies that wish to participate in the APEC privacy system will undergo a review and certification process by third parties that will examine corporate privacy policies and practices and enforce the new privacy rules. Also, the FTC and privacy authorities in the APEC region that choose to participate in the program will serve as backstop enforcers of the rules.
The FTC, the Department of Commerce, U.S. corporations, and privacy advocacy organizations worked together with their counterparts in other APEC economies to formulate the APEC cross-border privacy rules. APEC member economies expect to launch the new privacy system next year.
