A city archives board asks why Europe needed special rules for personal data long before the GDPR existed. Which historical rationale best answers them?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Think of Europe's privacy tradition like a house built decades before a fancy remodel. Human dignity and early computers already made people nervous about filing systems that could track citizens at scale — the GDPR is the remodel, not the foundation. So the board is really asking about that older story, not a 2018 invention myth.
Full Explanation
European data-protection law grew from human-rights and autonomy concerns after World War II and from anxiety about automated processing as computing spread. Instruments such as the OECD Guidelines and Council of Europe Convention 108 preceded the GDPR by decades. Framing the GDPR as the sudden invention of privacy misstates that lineage; the Regulation strengthens and modernises an already established European tradition.