Regulators disagree about approach to online-privacy rules

[Commentary] Data and privacy regulators from governments around the world met in Mexico City for the 33rd International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. As you might expect, they were joined by companies anxious to be part of the conversation, along with people from nonprofits that focus on privacy issues.

Directly behind the speaker’s podium were the logos of sponsoring companies, including Google, which has been at the receiving end of enforcement actions from some of the very regulators who took the stage, such as the Federal Trade Commission, which this year entered into a consent decree with Google over charges that it "used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy promises to consumers" when it launched Buzz in 2010. Buzz has been discontinued as Google focuses on its newly created Google+ social network. At the conference, it became increasingly clear that there are tensions not only between regulators and those they regulate but among regulators themselves, who don't always agree on just whether they should be wielding sticks or dangling carrots.