The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL, ; ) is an independent French administrative regulatory body whose mission is to ensure that data privacy law is applied to the collection, storage, and use of personal data. Its existence was established by the French loi n° 78-17 on Information Technology, Data Files and Civil Liberty of 6 January 1978, and it is the national data protection authority for France. From September 2011 to February 2019, the CNIL has been chaired by Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin. It's now chaired by Marie-Laure Denis. History The CNIL was created partially in response to public outrage against the SAFARI program, which was an attempt by the French government to create a centralized database allowing French citizens to be personally identified by different government services. On 21 March 1974, an article in the newspaper Le Monde, "SAFARI ou la chasse aux Français" (SAFARI; or, Hunting Frenchmen) brought public attention to the project. Interior Minister Jacques Chirac, freshly appointed following the events of May 1968, had to face the public uproar. Chirac was the successor to Raymond Marcellin, who had been forced to resign in the end of February 1974 after having attempted to place wiretaps in the offices of the weekly newspaper Le Canard enchaîné. The massive popular rejection of the government's activities in this domain prompted the creation of the CNIL. At the beginning of 1980, when the CNIL began its main activities, news anchorman Patrick Poivre d'Arvor announced that the CNIL had registered 125,000 files. By the end of 1980, Poivre d'Arvor counted 250,000 files (public and private). Composition and independence The CNIL is composed of seventeen members from various government entities, four of whom are members of the French parliament (Assemblée nationale and Sénat); twelve of these members are elected by their representative organisations in the CNIL. The CNIL's status as an administrative regulatory body gives it total independence to choose its course of action. However, its power is limited and defined by law. The CNIL is financed by the budget of the French Republic. Power The CNIL registers the setup of information systems that process personal data on French territories. By September 2004, more than 800,000 declarations of such systems had been made. Additionally, CNIL checks the law to be applied in this domain as well as in about 50 annual 'control missions'. CNIL can warn organisations or people who are found