Computers: Data privacy: The European community grapples with protecting individual rights in the midst of rampant computer progress

The matter of invasion of privacy has become a touchy issue in the computer age, and Europe is moving to resolve questions of human rights with uniform legal guarantees. The emerging branch of law is called data protection. Already, some people are questioning whether the law will ever be able to catch up with reality. For example, the notion of `data bank', which appears in some laws, is already becoming inadequate; it is now possible to manipulate data instantaneously without a permanent record. As a result, French law now uses the term `data treatment'. A further example: with networks and intelligent terminals for data processing, rules intended originally for specialists now must address the public at large. For this very reason, an ongoing dialogue between lawyers and data-processing experts is essential.