A (very) brief history of Privacy

January 2016: The 47 countries of the Council of Europe as well as European institutions, agencies and bodies celebrated the 10th annual European Data Protection Day which marks the anniversary of the Council of Europe’s Convention 108.

May 2009: The European Commission kicked off a conference dedicated to the use and protection of personal data and to examining new challenges for privacy including but not limited to matters of data protection in a globalised world with increased mobility and in the wake of modern communication and information technologies, data exchange by public authorities and private companies and international transfers of personal data in the context of cloud computing.

October 1995: The European Data Protection Directive (officially: Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data) was created as an essential element of EU privacy and human rights law. The directive came into force on 13 December 1995 and required EU member states to implement the corresponding provisions in national law by 24 October 1998.

In 1981: The treaty regarding the protection of individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data was signed as Council of Europe Convention 108 and went into effect on 1 October 1985. All 47 members of the Council of Europe have ratified the treaty, except Turkey.

In 1970, the federal state of Hessen passed the first national data protection law, which was also the first data protection law in the world.

In 1890 the United State jurist Samuel D. Warren and Louis Brandeis wrote ‘The Right to Privacy’, an article in which they argued for the “right to be let alone”, using that phrase as a definition of privacy. It strengthened the notion of privacy rights for individuals and began a legacy of discussion on those rights.

If protecting privacy means something to you, then Privacy Consultants have you covered.