In this Article, I will examine a phenomenon that I refer to as the privacy paradox (or paradoxes, as I identify several of them). This phenomenon appears in the Euro-Atlantic discussion on privacy and personal data protection.

As a Pole, I feel inclined to take part in discussion on the issue at hand. 

There is another reason why the analysis of the European and American personal data protection systems carried out from the perspective of a Polish researcher is particularly attractive. And that is the fact that the Polish Personal Data Protection Act of 19972 is virtually a word-for-word transposition of the EU Data Protection Directive of 1995.3 Hence the Polish regulation reveals and puts to a test the intentions of the EU legislator.

My aim is to follow the principles of comparative legal doctrine in an attempt to avoid falling into the EU- or U.S.-centrism trap.

As mentioned, this Article will focus on comparative research from the perspective of a European legal practitioner with close to twenty years of professional experience in Poland—an EU member state and a vital European and global center for business support services, which entails intensive data transfers to and from Poland.

In my Paper I will (i) introduce the issue at hand, (ii) define basic terminology, (iii) discuss the axiological basis of the European and American regulations, (iv) describe systemic differences between them, (v) present evolutionary tendencies of both legal systems, and (vi) outline a proposed method of convergence.

The full content of the article is available by clicking the link: http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/oslj/files/2013/12/15-Marcinkowski.pdf 

Source: Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 74:6