Data protection in the EU: the certainty of uncertainty

When a regulation asserts that some data is 'anonymous', it is disconnected from the best theories in computer science.
As I write this, the European Parliament is involved in a world-beatingly gnarly wrangle over the new General Data Protection Regulation. At stake are the future rules for online privacy, data mining, big data, targeted advertising, data-driven social science, governmental spying (by proxy), and a thousand other activities that are at the heart of many of the internet's largest companies, and our politicians' darkest and most uncontrolled ambitions.
The lobbyists are out in force. The activists I know who go to Brussels say they've never seen the like: it's a veritable feeding frenzy of lobbying. Hundreds of amendments and proposals are on the table – some good, some bad, and just making sense of them is a full-time job.

Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/jun/05/data-protection-eu-anonymous