On the whole, where does personal information enjoy a higher level of actual privacy, in the European Union or in the United States? Conventional wisdom — especially in Europe — holds that actual privacy levels observed by companies are higher in Europe than here.
That is likely because the E.U. member state national privacy laws, enacted pursuant to the E.U. Data Protection Directive, [FOOTNOTE 1] tend to be more stringent — or at least more stringently interpreted — than federal and state privacy laws in the United States.
