David and All,
I appreciate this Privacy sub-group mission of seeking additional information about privacy and data protection frameworks and laws that impact our work in this WG. The world has changed significantly since the founding of ICANN, particularly re: privacy and data protection laws. Currently, 109 countries have data protection laws – more than half the world – and the number is growing rapidly.

I. Global Data Protection Laws

These countries exist in ICANN's key regions, with countries in Africa, Asia & the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. I can't imagine any registrar who is not touched by these laws or representing registrants in these regions. Per the mandate of this sub-group, we are asked to lay out information about these data protection laws and frameworks and to that end, I attach:

  1. “Global Tables of Data Privacy Laws and Bills (4th Ed, January 2015)” with 109 countries; and

  2. “Global data privacy laws 2015,” an article by Professor Greenleaf, which lays out the clear and rapid path of privacy law adoption. He writes in the opening to this article:

    “This is the fourth in a series of articles which has documented the increasing number of countries with data privacy laws, initially assessed in mid-2011 to an (unexpected high) 76, expanding through new laws and further research to 89 by early 2012, and then by mid-2013 to 99. The number of countries which have now enacted data privacy laws has risen to 109 over the past eighteen months.” (attached)

II. Council of Europe

Further, the Council of Europe's Treaty 108 on Data Protection is signed by 47 countries with 3 more in the process of signing. All are listed in this attachment and I would like to request that this treaty and its signatories become an official part of our sub-group record:

http://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/treaty/108/signatures?p_auth=o943zouk


III. European Union

Finally, the European Data Protection Directive, 1995, is a key document for the 28 countries of the European Union and a foundation document for the dozens of data protection laws that followed around the world. The 28 members of the EU are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK. I would ask that the Directive be included in our materials, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV%3Al14012.

Tx again for this important collection of documents.

Best,

Kathy