Data Protection Directive

The Data Protection Directive, officially Directive 95/46/EC, enacted in October 1995, was a European Union directive which regulated the processing of personal data within the European Union (EU) and the free movement of such data. The Data Protection Directive was an important component of EU privacy and human rights law. The principles set out in the Data Protection Directive were aimed at the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms in the processing of personal data. The General Data Protection Regulation, adopted in April 2016, superseded the Data Protection Directive and became enforceable on 25 May 2018. The right to privacy is a highly developed area of law in Europe. All the member states of the Council of Europe (CoE) are also signatories of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Article 8 of the ECHR provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence", subject to certain restrictions. The European Court of Human Rights has given this article a very broad interpretation in its jurisprudence. In 1973, American scholar Willis Ware published Records, Computers, and the Rights of Citizens, a report that was to be influential on the directions these laws would take. In 1980, in an effort to create a comprehensive data protection system throughout Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued its "Recommendations of the Council Concerning Guidelines Governing the Protection of Privacy and Trans-Border Flows of Personal Data". The seven principles governing the OECD's recommendations for protection of personal data were: Notice—data subjects should be given notice when their data is being collected; Purpose—data should only be used for the purpose stated and not for any other purposes; Consent—data should not be disclosed without the data subject's consent; Security—collected data should be kept secure from any potential abuses; Disclosure—data subjects should be informed as to who is collecting their data; Access—data subjects should be allowed to access their data and make corrections to any inaccurate data Accountability—data subjects should have a method available to them to hold data collectors accountable for not following the above principles.