Questions of data, law, feminism and the environment are not new, and contrary to popular perceptions, were not discovered as a field of critical thought by contemporary scholars. These debates were already taking place in national and international fora in the 1960s and the 1970s. Among the most prolific European figures in those pioneering discussions, stood out the feminist, environmentalist, and critical thinker of computers, data and their relation with power, Kerstin Anér.Kerstin Anér (1920-1991) was a Swedish author, politician, advocate, literary critic, and much more – a ground-breaking public intellectual who, inter alia, was actively involved in shaping the first national data protection law ever in 1973. Since then, however, her name appears to have been almost erased from European collective memory. She was a prominent public figure in data protection law and policy debates in her own time, but Anér and her work – both its scope and material findings – have for the most part descended into oblivion. Privacy and data protection scholars have largely ignored her seminal writings and activism. When exceptionally cited, her name has been misspelled. And her ideas are even more often misattributed, with only a few examples to the contrary.
