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I think we both have a lot of work to do and what I'd like do is come back here in a year
and see how far we've come in trying to develop a new framework that protects consumer privacy,
meeting the aspirational goals that we all agree on -- consumer understanding, transparency,
meaningful consumer choice, safeguarding consumer choice in terms of privacy protection, not
needlessly stifling the development of new products and new services. I'd like to see
all of that. And I would hope that we end up seeing things very much the same way that
our European colleagues do, and I suspect we will.
I think at the end of the day our European colleagues may end up with a prescriptive
statute that will come out of the European Commission, and I think we'll come up with
a framework that we will announce to the world, there will be clear guidelines, and we will
pursue vigorously enforcement cases against companies that do not adhere to those guidelines.
So I don't expect there to be a revolution in the way we view our enforcement responsibilities
and how we want to get compliance. After all, these are just two different paths towards
the same end. The same end is making sure companies comply with the law, they respect
consumer privacy, they safeguard consumer information, and they give consumers meaningful
choice. So I'm putting aside the means. These are
just means to the same end. When I come back a year from now -- and I'll be back before
then -- I'm hoping that we're walking down the same path to the same goals, maybe taking
slightly different approaches, but that we have come to some understanding about what
the right way to do things is and that we've figured out in our own way how to implement
that.