Sorrell was speaking at the Interact 2015 conference in Berlin, and said that public concerns about digital security and online fraud were often being confused with the legitimate use of anonymised data by communications agencies.

Talking about his expectation for legislators to seek curbs on the way third party data can be used, he was quoted by Warc as saying: “We want as much flexibility as possible in using it. The odds are, and I’d be prepared to put money on it, legislators being willing to be more active (on data protection). If we think it’s wrong, we have to push back on it in a more active way.”

“If you managed to remove concerns about security, like Wikileaks, Julian Assange and the NSA,” he went on, “cybercrime and all of that sort of stuff … if we solve the security issue, which may be impossible, we solve the privacy issue.”