Karan Bhatia, vice president of global public policy and government relations at Google, said there should be common rules when it comes to regulating technology on a global basis.
According to a report in CNBC, during a CNBC-hosted panel at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Bhatia said that while one approach to regulating technology won’t work all the time, there are some areas where there could be a convergence of regulations globally. “Some coordination on this, some level of collaboration, I think is going to be absolutely critical. We are very supportive of international efforts on multiple fronts to sort of create that level of dialogue and ideally common rules of the road,” Bhatia said, according to the report. “I think it would be extremely helpful if there was some convergence.”
The comments on the part of Bhatia come as governments across the globe are looking at ways to increase regulation of technology companies from data privacy and tax perspectives. To date, the countries have cobbled together their own regulation — but there hasn’t been one international approach. The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is the first piece of legislation that covers all 28 of the European Union member states. In the U.S. it’s more fragmented — states, rather than the federal government, are leading the charge. California, for one example, is aiming to introduce strict privacy laws of its own akin to the GDPR.
According to Bloomberg, there is a growing realization by policymakers around the globe that there needs to be more regulation of tech companies as data breaches and scandals at the likes of Facebook and Google have garnered widespread attention. The Google executive said during the presentation that in the U.S. there should be a federal approach to regulating tech companies. “We’re actually very supportive of comprehensive privacy legislation,” Bhatia said.
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