From UC Davis in 2024:
“Data Privacy Day is marked each year on January 28….Data Privacy Day began in the United States and Canada in January of 2008 as an extension of its European counterpart. In Europe, Data Protection Day commemorates the January 28, 1981, signing of Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty on privacy and data protection.”
According to the Council of Europe:
“This Convention is the first binding international instrument which protects the individual against abuses which may accompany the collection and processing of personal data and which seeks to regulate at the same time the transfrontier flow of personal data.
“In addition to providing guarantees in relation to the collection and processing of personal data, it outlaws the processing of “sensitive” data on a person’s race, politics, health, religion, sexual life, criminal record, etc., in the absence of proper legal safeguards. The Convention also enshrines the individual’s right to know that information is stored on him or her and, if necessary, to have it corrected.”
The full (English) text is here (PDF).
A lot has happened since 1981, but it all had to start somewhere.
(An aside: I wrote this post on Saturday, November 8, 2025. On that date I asked Google Gemini when the next biometric-related holiday was, and this is what came up.)
Bredemarket 