Privacy Laws & Business enters our 40th year

This February marks the start of our 40th year as an independent data privacy information service. I am often asked how it started…

From 1980, I worked as a business journalist at Business International (BI) later bought by The Economist. From time to time, I wrote about new data protection laws being adopted mainly in European countries. Most of the time I wrote about other business issues, such as marketing, human resources, and employee share ownership.

As new data protection laws were drafted and adopted, I organised roundtables with policy makers in the UK (see the photo) Italy and Spain in 1985. One of the participants in Madrid was Christopher Millard, then a trainee at London-based law firm, Clifford-Turner, now Clifford Chance. He has remained a constant support on becoming a partner there, and at Linklaters, and now as Professor at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary (QM), University of London.

Stewart with Eric Howe, the UK's Data Protection Registrar, in 1986

I wrote an article for The Economist about the first case to reach the UK’s top court, then the House of Lords. The issue was a policeman’s misuse of the Police National Computer to run a background check on the boyfriend of his neighbour’s daughter. The policeman was found guilty.

As the in-house “expert” on data protection laws, I was tasked with conducting a series of interviews and writing reports in several countries on how the laws were working from company perspectives. The clients valued this work. I suggested to the management that we create a sample newsletter on the developing national data protection laws and their impact on companies.

A business niche

I called this BI publication Information Laws & Companies. This niche newsletter was promoted, and it attracted some interest but not quite enough to make a commercial case to go ahead with a regular publication. So in late 1986 I asked for permission to run my own international data protection newsletter in my own time. My request was approved.

Having previously worked in market research, I contacted a few companies which had expressed interest in the sample newsletter and asked whether they would subscribe to it if I started publishing it by myself, independently of The Economist. The first company I asked was Dun & Bradstreet, and others, such as Barclays Bank soon followed, all saying yes, as no-one else had a focus on this subject.

So I switched from my journalism role to an international human resources consulting role at BI selling salary comparisons and cost of living surveys. This demanded a different and more commercial skill set, and at evenings and weekends, I spent time on my new independent publication.

The Privacy Laws & Business Newsletter

I decided on a new trading name, Privacy Laws & Business and launched the Privacy Laws & Business Newsletter in February 1987. Our first customers included Barclays, BP, Bourns AG, Commerzbank, Standard Chartered Bank, Clifford-Turner, the UK’s new Data Protection Registrar and Sweden’s Data Inspectorate. At this period, there were only around 10 countries with data protection laws but more and more laws were adopted almost every year.

I started on a borrowed computer, printed pages on a noisy daisywheel printer and took them to a photocopy shop which ran off copies and added a staple in the corner. We started with an annual subscription of £100 covering four editions per year. The first edition and the next several years of Newsletters are freely available on our website.

At the start, we used 51/4 inch floppy discs as our storage medium and an inexpensive word processing software called Bonnie Blue. My wife, Merrill, was the first Editor. But as she had a dual role as mother to our sons, she switched to become Assistant Editor when I took the bold step into the uncertainty of going full time in April 1989. She continues to read everything, including this blog.

As we had only just started using e-mail, we relied on post for our promotions and delivering newsletters to clients. Most orders arrived the same way with cheques in letters. For book-keeping, we started by using traditional paper ledger books.

The only place for our new fax machine was our bedroom. The downside of having this noisy neighbour was relieved when we started receiving orders by fax, sometimes from Hong Kong, but sometimes at night!

The first conference

After we had successfully navigated the first annual renewal cycle, we wanted to meet our clients in-person and so decided to organise our first conference. It took place in October 1988 at the Mayfair Hotel in central London. It featured speakers on the Council of Europe Convention 108, the new data protection laws in Ireland (13 July 1988); the soon to be adopted Data Protection Act in the Netherlands (28 December 1988) and the draft law in Switzerland adopted in 1992.

Both the UK’s Data Protection Registrar and France’s CNIL sent an observer building on the relationship we had with them as newsletter subscribers. One of our correspondents at the conference was doctoral student Ian Walden, now Professor Ian Walden, like Christopher Millard, also at the CCLS, QM.

Constant support

There are two people who have been a constant support for over 25 years and 35 years respectively, both writers in this February 2026 edition of PL&B International Report. They are Editor, Laura Linkomies, who wrote the EU Commission’s Digital Omnibus proposals; and Asia-Pacific Editor, Professor Graham Greenleaf who shares with us not only his landmark article on 50 years of data privacy laws but also his Rules expand India’s data privacy law.

Looking forward

Looking forward, we have many highlights in this 40th year, including:

• 5 March: PL&B’s AI Workshop, How to Deploy AI Within a Data Legal Framework, in association with and hosted by Browne Jacobson in Birmingham and a related survey which we are running with international research company, Ipsos.
  • Report Subscribers can register for free until 19 February
• 17 May: PL&B’s Ireland and EU privacy/digital laws: New horizons in association with and hosted by McCann FitzGerald in Dublin.
  • Speakers will include Michael McGrath, European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection; and Dr Des Hogan, Ireland’s Commissioner for Data Protection.
  • Report Subscribers can register for free until 16 April
• 6-8 July: I am pleased to announce the title for PL&B’s 39th International Conference at St. John’s College, Cambridge: Digital Omnibus Regulation: The Fundamental things apply
  • Both Professors Millard and Walden will be playing leading roles in the Debate at the Cambridge Union.

Keep watching our website for further details. Early bird registration is now open.

I am grateful to the hundreds of people who have helped make Privacy Laws & Business a thriving enterprise with thousands of clients in every region around the world.

We look forward to meeting you at these events, both in-person and online. As time goes by, from the start until now, conversations with members of our International PL&B Community are a continuing inspiration.

Stewart Dresner and Merrill Dresner
Publisher and Assistant Editor, Privacy Laws & Business

February 2026