After months of European criticism of its privacy policies and as it crosses fingers the US Federal Trade Commission will green-light its DoubleClick acquisition despite similar concerns, Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) is today backing a new international standard for how companies should protect users’ data privacy. At a Unesco meeting on ethics in Strasbourg, France, Google’s privacy counsel Peter Fleischer was due to endorse the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s (APEC) Privacy Framework (full document here), which was approved by member governments in 2004 and focuses on “preventing harm” to users

Fleischer last night (via CNET News.com): “We need to work together to create minimum global standards partly by law and partly by self-regulation. Other countries have an ideological bent. .. APEC has a pragmatic focus on privacy harms… not abstractions.”

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