US and EU Internet Privacy Protection Regimes: Regulatory Spillover in the Travel Industry--Top Student Paper, Communication Law and Policy Division.

The digital age is characterized by the increasing availability and pervasiveness of electronic communication products and services. These advancements, epitomized by the Internet, greatly increase the speed and efficiency of transactions and catalyze productivity and economic growth. The architecture of the Internet separates content from ownership on the network and allows for application and service providers to lie beyond the jurisdiction of national rules and regulations (Bach 2001). While characteristics of the Internet appear to make this technology “borderless,” our geo-political global makeup, the backbone of the law, remains delineated in terms of sovereign nations. These nations follow vastly different approaches in their attempt to regulate the Internet and the digital economy. Thus, while the Internet can be viewed as a global network, national governments have different standards for the treatment of personal information and identifiers. This essay first explores the cross-border variation in privacy protection in the United States and European Union, and discusses major regulatory initiatives implemented by both regions, including the EU Data Directive and the US Patriot Act. Theoretical analysis of privacy protection is offered to explain the considerable variation between the different regimes. An examination of the regulatory spillover in the travel industry with regard to passenger information concludes the practical analysis of this paper. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]