Editor's Notes-The Privacy Dilemma

To learn more about the topic, I attended the Privacy and Data Security Summit in Washington, D.C., in January. Sponsored by the International Association of Privacy Officers, the second-annual conference offered educational seminars to help executives navigate their way through the minefield that has become customer data gathering and sharing. The list of federal privacy regulations that govern U.S. corporations reads like an alphabet soup—GLB (finance), HIPAA (healthcare), COPPA (children's privacy) and more.