Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik will be in Davos, Switzerland this week for the World Economic Forum. As a member of the World Economic Forum Agenda Council on Internet Security, Fertik will appear as a guest on a panel discussing the important issue of Internet privacy, and he will also moderate a different panel addressing the same issue.

During his time in Davos, Michael Fertik will offer insider reports on the various panels and discussions occurring during the World Economic Forum. In his first pre-Davos report, Michael Fertik checks in with the Washington Post to explain why digital privacy will be one of the most talked-about issues at the World Economic Forum this year and how policymakers in the United States and Europe will be addressing the issue throughout 2011.

Check out an excerpt from Michael’s Washington Post report below:

We all know digital privacy is under grave threat. This important subject gets global treatment this week as business leaders and policymakers convene at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF has identified this emerging topic early and is promising to help set the worldwide agenda for new solutions to the rapidly advancing problem by convening a number of events specifically addressing the subject. I shall be moderating one such session and a panel member of another.

Social networking, Wikileaks, and the cloud are all turning up the heat on the urgency of protecting private information. To date, however, the law has been slow to foster deep security for personal data, while business has failed to develop novel ways of monetizing information without resorting to proven advertising models that necessarily exist in tension with the interests of privacy.

In the past year alone, privacy has been thrust into the public’s awareness by Google Street View, Facebook, social networking apps, iPhone and Droid apps, the I Can Stalk U app, Wikileaks, and even Julian Assange’s OKCupid profile. Cohesive responses to growing threats to personal data have remained elusive, however. Some of the elusiveness derives from deep disagreements as to how to proceed. From a policy perspective, the EU and US appear to be gearing up for a fight, given strongly dissonant views on how best to treat privacy.

Head over to the Washington Post for the full report.