That email from your CEO announcing an international expansion changes everything about your privacy program. Suddenly, you’re not just dealing with new requirements – you’re facing fundamentally different approaches to privacy itself. Success requires more than just updating your privacy notice and hoping for the best.
The Privacy Philosophy Problem
“Privacy” means different things in different places. As this week’s Arcana episode mentions,1 U.S. privacy laws treat privacy as a consumer protection issue, dividing requirements by industry sector. Step outside our borders, and everything changes. The EU considers privacy a fundamental human right, and the individual must get more say over when and how information about them is used as a result. China views privacy through the lens of national security and state sovereignty. These philosophical differences drive how they implement their laws and, as a result, how you should implement privacy controls in those jurisdictions.
Operational Reality
Most of my readers are in the U.S., so I feel comfortable saying that your current privacy implementation mirrors U.S. privacy thinking – sectoral controls, specific use cases, and a consumer protection focus. But that approach will likely fall apart when you start operating internationally due to the philosophical shift. You need privacy controls that can adapt to different fundamental assumptions about privacy and how it should be protected.
Building Working International Controls
Start with your highest common denominator. The GDPR’s requirements generally encompass most other privacy laws, making it a solid foundation. Build your baseline privacy controls to meet these comprehensive standards, then add specific controls for unique jurisdictional requirements.
This means your consent management system must handle different definitions of what “valid consent” means. Your data inventory must track different jurisdictional definitions of personal data. Your processing records need to document compliance with multiple frameworks simultaneously.
Making Systems Work Together
The real challenge isn’t understanding the requirements – it’s making your systems enforce them correctly. Your customer database needs to know which privacy regime applies to each record. Your marketing automation platform must respect jurisdiction-specific consent requirements. Your data retention system has to enforce different retention periods based on applicable laws.
Most importantly, these systems need to coordinate. An unsubscribe request or consent withdrawal must propagate across your entire infrastructure, respecting the shortest applicable deadline from any relevant jurisdiction.
Practical Implementation Steps
Instead of solving everything all at once, sequence your implementation based on operational impact. Start by mapping your data flows across jurisdictions – you can’t protect data if you don’t know where it goes. Build jurisdiction detection into your data collection points. Create clear processes for handling cross-border data transfers.
Your operational processes need similar treatment. Customer service needs clear guidance on handling privacy requests from different jurisdictions. Development teams need to understand privacy requirements during system design. Marketing needs to know which campaigns can target which regions.
Testing What Matters
Don’t just test your privacy controls against individual requirements – test them at jurisdictional boundaries. What happens when an EU resident signs up through your U.S. website? How do you handle privacy requests from customers who move between jurisdictions? These edge cases often reveal critical implementation gaps.
Making It Real
Perfect international privacy compliance exists only in policy documents. Real privacy protection comes from understanding where your implementation falls short and continuously improving. Start with your highest-risk data flows, build consistent baseline controls, and systematically expand your privacy program’s international capabilities.
This article provides general information about privacy law implementation strategies and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult qualified legal counsel for advice on specific situations.
Footnotes
- Going Global: Your International Privacy Expansion Playbook, (2025), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTeUCD5jMAc (last visited Jan 10, 2025). ↩︎
