On the substance of the sessions, I was surprised by what amounts to another tidbit: this high-level crew of participants — including leaders from private sector, public sector, academia, and from around the world — seemed to think that greater alignment of privacy rules is desirable and possibly feasible. The consensus was not in favor of perfect “harmonization,” but rather forms of alignment that respect cultural differences, help consumers, and enable commerce to thrive. Easier said than done, to be sure, but I was surprised at the degree of consensus. The two keywords that seemed to resonate most: “alignment” and “interoperability.”

(There were specific caveats: 1) not enough public awareness and not enough pain by businesses to get this done; 2) need to scrap the bilateral approaches in a world of cloud computing; 3) enforcement challenges will abound.)