On ICT law, politics and other digital stuff
Laura Boldrini, the leftwinger president of Italian Low Chamber (Camera dei deputati) has endorsed the settlement of a commission “for the Internet-related duty and rights”.
This commission is the tragical… sorry I meant “logical”, consequence of the dangerous “Internet Bill of Rights” campaign.
Given Boldrini’s attitude toward the Internet, ? I do hope that this commission wouldn’t turn into a trojan-horse ? to bash enterprise and individual rights.
Another example of how a non-statistical-based research is turned by poorly informed journalists into “scientific truth”. Net-Threats is a survey collecting the opinions of a certain number of “experts”: as its authors clearly state:
Since the data are based on a non-random sample, the results are not projectable to any population other than the individuals expressing their points of view in this sample. The respondents’ remarks reflect their personal positions and are not the positions of their employers; the descriptions of their leadership roles help identify their background and the locus of their expertise.
But this part of the survey – that nobody but the concerned people will ever read – is missed in the ? poor journalistic account of the news and the readers will be given the wrong idea that the figures quoted are for real and that the findings are “true”.
By the way, as in the other “statistical” research about the value of personal data, I’ve written about, the findings of this survey might even be acceptable. But there is no need to beef it up with figures and percentage show off that give the general reader a wrong information.
But in this case, the culprit is the journalist.
The title that links the article about the leaked Italian Data Protection Authority secret report is no more easily accessible on Repubblica.it (the newspaper that did the scoop.) There is no trace of this link in the home-page, and the title is missed in the Technology section.
If you are quick enough, a one minute short video clip gives you the possibility to click an anonymous link (labelled “Leggi su Repubblica.it” – “Read it on Repubblica.it”) and finally the article comes on screen.
Technically speaking, then, the article is still online but now in a hard-to-find form. And this is rather odd, because other older and less important articles (such as the valueless research on the personal data selling price) are still featured in the technology section of this newspaper.
The new Coca-Cola marketing campaign in Italy puts on its bottles quotes from popular Italian songs. Of course this has been previously negotiated with the copyrights holders but not with the single artists that sold their song to the music label.
Technically speaking, Coca-Cola did nothing wrong and its activity is perfectly legal. But one of the featured singers, Caparezza, didn’t like his songs to be exploited the Coca-Cola way.
Under Italian Copyright Law, Caparezza and – broadly speaking – an artist have no actual protection in such case since once the tune has been sold to a music label, the musician only retains the “moral right” (mainly the right to be credited as the author, and the right to oppose any mutilation of his work.)
So the question is: whose interests copyright is supposed to take care of?
According to an Italian newsmagazine, a non-for-public eyes investigation of the Italian Data Protection Act would have found severe security problems in the management of the Internet Exchange Points (the points of the Italian telecommunication network where the various telco networks are mutually interconnected.)
A first remark is that the King is – or might be – naked. If this secret report actually exists (and the IDPA didn’t deny its existence) and has been leaked, the Authority’s information security is not that good, and – therefore – the IDPA should fine itself for this non compliance, instead of just targeting the rest of the (industrial) world.
Coming to the heart of the matter, in the words of the journalists that authored the article:
there is an enormous black hole in the security of the Italian telecommunications. A hole so wide that allows whoever with a proper equipment to have available phone calls, SMS, emails, chat, and social-network posted contents.
The journalists claim that the report verbatim says:
These device are equipped by technical features that can allow the traffic duplication, in real time, of the traffic in transit diverting it to another port (port mirroring)
and that
if somebody wanted to look at the traffic in transit this would be easily done with specific analysis tools …
It is amazing how this article – and the IDPA findings, if proven true – are so poorly legally and technically savvy because: