Can P3P help to protect privacy worldwide?

Privacy is a basic cultural requirement, often regulated by national law, but not everywhere in the same way. Privacy protection must be effective across national borders. Technical tools and procedures can help to enforce and propagate privacy protection for Internet communication worldwide. The “Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P)” is a standardization approach of the World Wide Web Consortium for privacy protection of the Web. This article describes the history and current state of P3P and evaluates the effect of P3P against legal requirements, particularly against those strict laws in Germany and Europe. This article is an interdisciplinary cooperation with technical and legal background.