ABSTRACT
It is one thing to describe and analyze the international instruments, laws, codes, commitments, technologies and other elements that compose what we have called regimes of privacy protection. It is quite another thing to evaluate any or all of these in terms of the effect they may have - singly or together - upon protecting individual privacy. There is a conventional wisdom about the effects of privacy strategies, which includes comparisons across regimes and across instruments. For example, it has often been said that the German and French data protection regimes are 'strong' in relation to those of other countries; conversely, that the instruments available in the United States provide only 'weak' protection. It is also considered that data protection laws are better at protecting privacy than, say, the market.
