The Data Protection Act, 1998
The ‘right to privacy’ is a right we all expect. We do not expect personal details such as our age, medical records, personal family details and, political and religious beliefs to be freely available to everybody. With the growth of information and communication technology, large databases are able to hold huge quantities of information and global networks are able to share and distribute this information around the world in seconds. To protect people and their personal information, the Data Protection Act was formed. The first Act was made law in 1984 but was replaced by a new Act in 1998 to include the European Union law.