CNN – Dilemmas of the Internet age: privacy vs. security
“The light touch approach on privacy that the U.S. government has engaged in has enabled American innovators to develop some of the best services we see online today and internationally,” said Carl Szabo, the policy counsel for NetChoice, a trade association of online businesses and consumers who advocate for consumer choice, as opposed to government regulation.
He cited an MIT/University of Toronto study that found that after the passage of the European Union’s Privacy Directive restricting advertisers’ ability to collect data from consumers “advertising effectiveness decreased on average by around 65 percent in Europe relative to the rest of the world.”
Based on this study, NetChoice determined that if the United States were to follow this model, American websites would lose $33 billion over the first five years.