Author: Andrea Monti

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COVID-19: Italian Contact Tracing App poses security concerns

Ordinance 10/2020 of the Extraordinary Commissioner for the implementation and coordination of measures to contain and combat the epidemiological emergency COVID-19 writes the final word in the chapter “Tracking yes, tracking no”. Italy wasted months idling on the decision to enforce a people’s tracking system. However, now the Government made up its mind and decided to us an “app” licensed free of charge by the developer. At the same time, however, the Commissioner’s Ordinance leaves untold some things related, in particular, to the security of the software, which, given the criticality of the moment, should have been a central element in the selection of the product.

Let’s start from strictly legal aspects: the company that developed the contact tracing software, as the Ordinance verbatim says,

solely out of a spirit of solidarity and, therefore, for the sole purpose of providing its contribution, both voluntary and personal, useful to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 emergency, has expressed its willingness to grant an open, free and perpetual licence to the Extraordinary Commissioner for the implementation and coordination of measures to contain and combat the COVID-19 epidemiological emergency and to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the source code and all the application components of the contact tracing system already developed, as well as, for the same reasons and always free of charge, has expressed its willingness to complete the IT developments that will be necessary to allow the national digital contact tracing system to start working. Continue reading “COVID-19: Italian Contact Tracing App poses security concerns”

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COVID-19: on “privacy zealots”, again

Let’s  come back once again to the subject of “privacy zealots” and fundamental rights to clarify some concepts that should be clear but, indeed, are not yet clear enough:

  • “privacy” does not mean confidentiality. The investigative journalist, the drug trafficker and the unfaithful partner all want confidentiality about their activities, but for very different reasons that have nothing to do with “privacy”.
  • “privacy” is not even protection of private life, which is a much broader concept and extends (unlike the conventional notion of privacy) also to public places where crimes of harassment and private violence are applied,
  • “privacy” is not the processing of personal data because the processing of personal data is instrumental to the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms. So the GDPR does not protect “privacy” but first of all the fundamental good life and from there to go down,
  • “privacy” is not even (as happened with the environment) a new right to be constitutionalized because the Italian Charter already provides specific rules to protect the inviolability of the home, freedom of thought, freedom of movement and secrecy of communications that “cover” the areas that you stubbornly want to bring within the domain of “privacy”.

Continue reading “COVID-19: on “privacy zealots”, again”

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COVID-19, privacy zealots and the abuse of “might” in Italy

I sound like a broken record that nobody listens to when I say that in a moment of constitutional rights – the real ones – withholding “privacy” is the least of our concerns.

Nevertheless, many supporters of an extreme concept of “privacy” continue to oppose the general and generalized identification of infected people and people who have come into contact with us because the state “could abuse” it. Continue reading “COVID-19, privacy zealots and the abuse of “might” in Italy”

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COVID-19, consumers and advertising

The “social distancing” causes, among other things, the rethinking of purchase habits. It is not just a matter of stop spending to survive the current economic crisis. The point is changing priorities and attitude towards objectively useless goods, regardless of the perceived “needs”.

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities,” Oscar Wilde wrote not long ago, but this age is hopefully over. Living secluded shows that our belongings are mostly sufficient to meet daily needs. The absence of social opportunities makes it useless flashing the latest smartphone. The need to work remotely focuses attention on the tools that allow us to do it better, more than on other “compulsive shopping” distractions. We realize first-hand, in other words, how much the superfluous weighs in our lives and how much and what we can do with fewer things. Continue reading “COVID-19, consumers and advertising”

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COVID-19: serological tests, snake-oil, eggheads in Italy

Pure irrationality, same irrationality that over the years led desperate people to believe in the “Di Bella method” or in the Stamina method to cure cancer or even before that in the “Filipino healers” and other forms of medical superstition spreads in the times of COVID-19.

“Serological tests” for the self-diagnosis of the presence of antibodies specific for the Coronavirus are now on sale. Still, notwithstanding their doubtful effectiveness, they have great commercial success. These tests do not claim explicitly to have a 100% guarantee of actually identify the presence of COVID-19 and make clear that only a physician should administer it. But as they are freely available online, they “cash in” the public hysteria of being able to know “if they have taken the virus”. Continue reading “COVID-19: serological tests, snake-oil, eggheads in Italy”