Comment by jampekka

There is a difference of information being public vs publicized. There's a huge difference in consequences for individuals of how widely information is distributed and how easily available it is.

This of course predates the internet. Publicizing generally available information about individuals or compiling them into databases for no acceptable reason has been illegal for ages at least in most of Europe.

The easier distribution by internet does cause some new questions in this and I'm not sure if restricting to "meatspace access" is optimal, but it is mostly what we have now.