Under proposed new EU data protection laws organisations that want to process personal data will have to obtain explicit prior consent from individuals to do so. Individuals would also be able to force organisations to delete the personal information they hold about them. The EU Commission is tasked with producing proposals to reform the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive by the end of January 2012. For full details see the JISC Legal Law Watch data protection item at http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/LawWatch.aspx.