The European Union’s much-vaunted General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force this week. But Europe isn’t the only entity trying to balance digital freedoms with citizens’ privacy rights. These five facts look at the state of data privacy laws around the world. What is GDPR? GDPR is the updated replacement to Europe’s 1995 Data Protection Directive, one that’s taken almost a decade to get across the finish line. At its heart, GDPR provides European citizens with the tools they need to better control the data collected about them.