The Data Protection Act 1984 was the United Kingdom's first piece of legislation to introduce and regulate data protection rights. This Act was established to control the processing of personal data held on computers and was enacted partly to allow the UK to ratify the Council of Europe's Convention 108. It created the role of the Data Protection Registrar (the precursor to the Information Commissioner) and established a set of principles for data handling. While subsequent acts in 1998 and 2018 significantly updated and replaced this law, the 1984 Act was the foundational legislation that first introduced these specific rights into UK law.

A. The Data Protection Act 1998 was a significant update that replaced the 1984 Act, but it was not the first of its kind.

B. There was no major Data Protection Act passed in 1992; this option is an incorrect date and serves as a distractor.

D. The Data Protection Act 2018 is the current primary legislation, which incorporated the GDPR, but it succeeded previous data protection laws.

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1. UK Public General Acts. (1984). Data Protection Act 1984. legislation.gov.uk. The long title of the Act states its purpose: "An Act to regulate the use of automatically processed information relating to individuals and the provision of services in respect of such information." This is the original statute introducing these rights. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/35/contents

2. Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). (n.d.). Our history. "1984: The Data Protection Act 1984 is passed by Parliament, giving effect to the Council of Europe Convention 108. The office of the Data Protection Registrar is created." This official source confirms the 1984 Act as the origin. Available at: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/who-we-are/our-history/

3. Edwards, L. (2018). From the Data Protection Act 1984 to the General Data Protection Regulation: a UK perspective. International Data Privacy Law, 8(3), 227–229. The article's introduction explicitly states, "The United Kingdom’s first data protection law was the Data Protection Act 1984 (DPA 1984)." DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipy014