Legal and public policy ideas and concepts are known to traverse national borders. The rapidity of this multinational exchange of ideas has been substantially enhanced through the technological revolution over the past two decades. How a nation adopts or rejects particular ideas and concepts reflects on its particular history, culture and priorities. The establishment of legal protections for privacy against intrusions by governments, employers, companies and individuals represents a concept that has been adopted in different ways by other nations. This article will focus on how the European Union and certain Western countries have approached the issue of protecting individual privacy in the electronic age with a primary emphasis on workplace privacy. Such an examination of the legal and policy choices by these other jurisdictions can provide alternative perspectives about the proper balance between individual rights and governmental power, as well as, the proper balance between employer and employee interests in the electronic workplace.