Re-identifying folks from anonymised data will be a crime in the UK
Found on The Register on Monday, 07 August 2017
The British government is planning to impose criminal sanctions on people who intentionally re-identify individuals from data that should have protected their identities.
In a statement of intent (PDF), published today, the government says "intentionally or recklessly re-identifying individuals from anonymised or pseudonymised data" will be an offence. Those who knowingly handle or process such data will also be committing a crime, it adds.
If you can re-identify someone from anonymised data, the data was not anonymised correctly in the first place. They should change the law to cause problems for those who fail to anonymise the data they release. If this law goes through, a company can release data without really caring about privacy and later put the blame on those who re-identified people. That's not how it should work.