Home » Privacy has bored (the elites): it is a mistake

Privacy has bored (the elites): it is a mistake

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“Privacy. This is iPhone ”. You have probably seen it. It’s the new Apple campaign. In big cities, there are huge billboards. I have never seen the word privacy written in block letters of this size. Yet they could have promoted one of the many marvels of the new 12 series: 5G connectivity (even who cares in fact); the thousandth camera and the ennemila megapixels (yawn, yawn); synchronization with thought or the screen of a glass so hard that it will only break your iPhone in the world. Instead, they chose to promote the seemingly least sexy and most important thing: privacy.

In fact, with the new iOS operating system, every time you open an app, a message appears that says: are you sure you want to share all your personal data with this app, or even not? I usually reply even less, to see what changes above all. If many do, it will likely change the Internet business model. It is an open debate that sees Facebook on the opposite side and, less loudly, Google who instead claim that users will have worse services (and startups will struggle to find customers).

While in the world privacy is elevated to the most important issue for the future of our digital lives, in Italy it seems to exist a great desire to get rid of it. In the space of a week, four authoritative “releases” have been recorded which essentially say the same thing: what a bummer this privacy, if there were no world it would be better. First Carlo Calenda about a decision of the supervisor on the data of the workers; then the minister Vittorio Colao and the economist Carlo Cottarelli, for the choice of the Guarantor not to authorize the IO app for the vaccination Green pass for now; and lastly the director of the Revenue Agency Ernesto Maria Ruffini who during a webinar said that electronic invoicing “has not given the desired effects … because we have a cabinet full of data that we are not authorized to use for privacy”. In short, tax evasion is the fault of privacy.

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Meanwhile, on Saturday, in a forum on the dark web, a cybercriminal put the personal data of over 7 million Italians up for sale, relating to their vaccination situation. Data from some data center where it was “ridiculously protected,” the hacker said. What does the cyber attack have to do with the political attack on privacy? Very very much. When we talk about privacy we are not talking about a bureaucratic trap but about a people’s right. It was born as a concept at the end of the 19th century, but recently it was two Italian jurists (Giovanni Buttarelli and Stefano Rodotà) who made it a lintel in Europe to protect people in the digital age. For those who think it is a whim, I recommend watching the movie Perfect Strangers ”when suddenly in a dinner all the messages that the onlookers receive are read aloud. A life without privacy is that thing there: the end of personal freedoms.

Then of course the press release from the guarantor on the Green Pass was open to criticism; and we can, indeed, we must take steps to make public databases interoperable (always using only the necessary data, not one more). But to pass the idea that privacy is not needed, on the contrary, that without “we would do it first”, is wrong and dangerous. A year ago when the Immuni app debuted, many argued that to beat the virus we would have to give up privacy and allow Immuni to track us like in South Korea. That thesis has not passed, the virus we are beating it only now thanks to vaccines and Immuni it didn’t work not for privacy but because the Ministry of Health did everything to make it fail. If we had given the green light to mass surveillance via apps, I don’t know if we would have really fought the virus a little earlier but we would have become an authoritarian state.

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When you give in on fundamental rights and freedoms, it is a moment that you find yourself saying that to beat traffic in cities we should limit people’s freedom of movement and to avoid wasting time in debates, including that of expression.

Italy in this historical period is a very strange country: those in charge seem to be trying to get rid of privacy, making citizens more vulnerable; and in the meantime all the data that by law should be public, for example those on the pandemic, remain locked in drawers. Zero transparency. They want to know everything about us, but they don’t tell us anything about them.

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