Author: Andrea Monti

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Late night thought on the notion of “privacy”

The more I think about, the more I’m convinced that if we continue to think of privacy as a concept unrelated to other ideas we face the old problem: if an unbreakable wall is a wall that cannot be broken and an unstoppable projectile is a projectile that cannot bestopped, what happens when an unstoppable projectile hits an unbreakable wall? This is not to justify a softer approach in defending privacy, rather to ask whether “trust” plays a role in defining (and not only supporting) privacy.

In other words: if each of us lived in a separate island then privacy would be at its best, but could we still think of privacy if nobody else is around?

If this is correct, than the privacy in itself should include the idea of (breaching the) trust. As soon as we enter into a relationship with somebody else, we need to surrend a part of our privacy. This means that privacy is co-defined by our counterpart’s ethical commitment to recognize it as a “value”.

Odds, although intriguing.

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Net-neutrality, Trojan Horses

In Italy the Codice delle comunicazioni elettroniche legally bind ISPs to guarantee the functionality and security of the network (both from a physical and logical perspective). This means that if traffic shaping is needed to handle traffic overload this can be done with no specific provision.
Every proposal of nailing down traffic shaping options is a trojan horse because – for instance – copyright lobbies might whistleblow that P2P is creating an international emergency thus forcing ISPs to violate the net neutrality “for security sake”.

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In the name of privacy…

If passed, a bill heavily supported by right wing Italian prime minister and media mogul , Silvio Berlusconi, will force the public prosecutors to wiretap suspect’s communication for a limited time and will punish harshly those who shares information related to a criminal investigation before the trial (that usually, in Italy, starts year after the alleged crime has been detected.)
This draft law is a ruthless attempt to shut down the check and balance system in Italy (thus, it is not a case that the bill is aimed at preventing prosecutors to investigate AND both traditional media and independent citizens to report information.)
That said, the reactions against the proposal were (and still are) short-sighted. Mainstream media talk about dangers for “bloggers” as if running a site with Drupal or WordPress actually gave a particular status to the information released. Technically speaking, whoever publish fake or offensive information is liable of his action. If those who commit the fact are journalists, then there is an additional liability for the editor-in-chief (in Italian: direttore responsabile.) Period.
I really don’t understand why a lot of “bloggers” complain for the (possible) introduction of a mandatory amendment of mistaken information. A law shouldn’t even be necessary, since it is matter of common sense to verify sources first and then, in case of error, fix it as fast as is possible.
Unfortunately, then, the criticisms against this law hit the wrong target, easing the work of the “Evil Forces”.

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Protecting privacy. The abuse excuse

Right wing minister of Home Affair (Maroni – Lega Nord) and undersecretary of economic development (Paolo Romani – Forza Italia) are pushing aggressively ISPs and Telcos to adopt a self-regulation on illegal content basically meaning: the gov wants ISPs to shut down “illegal” content upon “simple” notice, to protect “human dignity” and “privacy”.
What’s wrong with that?
First: although the label is “self-regulation” it isn’t actually so. Self regulation is (or should be) a set of rules that a specific sector freely choose to adopt. On the contrary, the gov arranged a “definitive draft” (so they called it) with no actual room for discussion.
Second: in Italy all the crimes involving human dignity and political freedom can be prosecuted without the need of a specific claim. If a public prosecutor believes that a such a crime has been committed, he can start the investigation on his own. Thus, if a content is illegal, it is a prosecutor business, while if the content is strong although not illegal, like it or not is just free speech.
Thus, there is no (legal and technical) need for the ISPs to become a “private court” telling the right from wrong. But this is exactly what this alleged “self regulation” wants to achieve: just shut down those “annoying bugs”.
So, if there is no need for such “self regulation” why does the gov try to enforce it?
The main reason is that they wants people to believe that industry itself chosen this solution, because the gov hasn’t the courage to pass such third world legislation.
So, with the excuse of protecting privacy and human dignity, what the Italian goverment is actually doing is pushing ahead the quest for censorship.

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Google’s executives indictment in Italy. Here are the reason’s why.

Finally the Court of Milan made public the opinion that backed the indictment of a couple of Google’s executives charged of Italian Data Protection Act infringement by not removing a violent video from the company’s video sharing platform, video.google.com. The opinion of the Court tells basically what I “guessed” in a previous post, (easy guess, BTW) while analyzing the charges against the managers.

Thus, to put it short, Google’s people have been indicted because they failed to verify, under the Italian Data Protection Act, whether all of the people depicted in the video positively consented to its upload. No matter that the service agreement bind the user to publish legally obtained content only.

As I’ve written and told in serveral places, this is a wrong decision.

Wrong in a legal perspective, for it set on ISP’s side an hidden duty of pre-emptive control over users’ activity.

Wrong in a social perspective, for it breaks the tie between a crime and its “author” and reinforces the idea of “faida” (the collateral vendetta of the ancient barbarians.)