Reporters Committee’s Brown, Stanford’s Keller warn against "Balkanization" of the internet with European privacy laws

In a New York Times op-ed, Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Daphne Keller, director of intermediary liability at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and a former associate general counsel for Google, caution against creating online barriers to information under European privacy laws.

They write, in part:

“Privacy is a real issue, and shouldn’t be ignored in the Internet age. But applying those national laws to the Internet needs to be handled with more nuance and concern. These developments should not be driven only by privacy regulators. State departments, trade and justice ministries and telecom regulators in France and other European countries should be demanding a place at the table. So should free-expression advocates.

“One day, international agreements may sort this all out. But we shouldn’t Balkanize the Internet in the meantime. Once we’ve erected barriers online, we might not be able to tear them down.”

Read the entire opinion column online here, from the April 25, 2016 edition of The New York Times.