This contribution reflects upon the shared structural characteristics of data protection, understood as the protection from the negative consequences of the increasing ‘datafication’ of the world and ‘industrialization’ of information processing for individuals, groups and the society, and environmental protection in order to shed some light on a peculiar aspect of the last decades’ development in both the environmental protection discourse and law that may provide a possible starting point for investigating how today’s data protection law might be further developed in order to strengthen its application as well as its enforcement in practice: the drive towards quantification. The contribution examines the discourse on the formalisation and quantification in privacy and data protection law, noting the lack of meaningful indicators for both risks to and protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, let alone measurable indicators, that take into account what these rights and freedoms actually guarantee, and suggests new avenues for future research on suitable measurable indicators that directly address the fundamental rights and freedoms at stake, with the promises they entail and the spheres of freedom they create.
