On September 16, 2008, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held its open consultation at Geneva in preparation for the third forum that will be held in Hyderabad, India from December 3-6, 2008.

Comments on the Substantive Program Agenda was one of the main topics of discussion. In the 2007 IGF meeting, privacy was subsumed under the main session of "security" and other controversial topics including human rights were avoided. This year, the right of privacy will be discussed under the main title "Promoting cyber-security and trust." Civil Society Participants objected to the title and said that some governments use the focus on security fear to diminish the right to privacy. Instead, civil society participants argued for discussions about the opportunities that the Internet offers to enrich fundamental rights and freedoms. At the Latin America Regional Consultation of the Internet Governance Forum in August, 2008, civil society participants pointed out that the right to privacy and data protection should be a main topic in the Internet Governance debate.

On September 24, 2008, the European Parliament voted (in first reading) in favor of reforms of telecommunications laws, including amendments to the European Union Directive for Privacy in Electronic Communications. Those amendments makes clear that "Data protection rules must cover private and not just public networks, so data stored on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace will be covered by the rules." It also includes the obligation of the companies operating on the Internet to notify the public about security breaches. "A security violation such as the theft of a client list must be notified to the regulator by the operator. Users must be warned of any infringement of their personal data if the case is serious enough to warrant it, and the perpetrator could be prosecuted by the Member State." Other provisions address topics such as spam, cookies, viruses, trojans and spyware. More information

The governments of Australia, Canada, the European Commission, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland, South Korea, and United States are negotiating a new intellectual property enforcement treaty called the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agrement (ACTA)". A coalition of organizations from all over the world are urging the negotiators of ACTA to publish immediately the draft text of the agreement as well as pre-draft discussion papers before continuing further discussions over the treaty.  Based on news reports from various business associations, civil society is concerned that the pre-draft text "require Internet Service Providers to monitor all consumers' Internet communications, to terminate their customers' Internet connections based on rights holders' repeat allegation of copyright infringement, and to divulge the identity of alleged copyright infringers possibly without judicial process, threatening Internet users' due process and privacy rights; and potentially make ISPs liable for their end users' alleged infringing activity; interfere with fair use of copyrighted materials" among others provisions.

The OECD Civil Society Seoul Declaration, signed by more than 87 organizations and 100 individuals, pointed out that Civil Society is also concerned about the secrecy of ACTA and the possibility of policies that may limit legitimate business activity, the participative web, and e-government service delivery.