ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author analyzes the various policy instruments that occupy the data protection landscape. Authors' analysis is organized according to an obvious, but imperfect, distinction between transnational, legal, self-regulatory and technological policy instruments. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Arena (OECD) comprises thirty of the world's most affluent countries. It 'provides governments a setting in which to discuss, develop and perfect economic and social policy. The primary role of the OECD is to promote trade and economic co-operation and to negotiate agreements that will foster those goals. The OECD Guidelines were serving more as a way to justify self-regulatory approaches than as a method to promote good data protection practices throughout the advanced industrial world. As the harmonization efforts of the Council of Europe, the OECD and the European Union have progressed, and as data protection has become of central importance to international electronic commerce, so rhetoric about European motives has been ratcheted up.
