On ICT law, politics and other digital stuff
Twenty years of hacking in about four minutes. This is a short documentary on the life of ? Metro Olografix, one of the oldest and most active digital NGO in Italy.
Proud to be there since the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eoNBNaKfB4A
p.s. The video is full of trivia about people and technology. But unfortunately, Google can’t help. You have to rely upon memory, culture and experience. Brain, in other words 🙂
Say you have to outsource the storage of your corporate data.
Say you have to assess the quality of a couple of (apparently) both “good looking” potential suppliers that give you both access housing/cloud services.
Say both of them are “ISO 27000-1 Certified”.
Which are you going to choose?
Answer: ask to see the “perimeter” that has been certified.
In other words: advertising on the corporate website or wherever else that a company is “ISO 27000-1 compliant” doesn’t always means that the WHOLE company actually is.
Maybe the certification has been obtained for the data-centre only, or just for a small part of the infrastructure, or – say – for the financial departement.
Thus, a fair use of the “label” would be a statement like this: “we are ISO 27000-1 certified for X,Y,Z” instead of a simpler (and deceptive) “we’ve got the ISO 27000-1”.
Next time, ask first.
Twenty years ago I jumped into the future.
I wasn’t actually aware of it. To me it was just matter of meeting “cool” people who, like me, loved (someone else’s:)) computers.
Twenty years after I’ve realized that I have been part of something great, though unacknowledged.
Join the Metro Olografix Twentieth Birthday Party at MO20.olografix.org.
We are the Internet’s humanity.
Please, don’t call us “monsters”. Or “sorcerers”. Or “masked avengers”.
We are just human beings driven by a powerful desire to learn and communicate.
Crossing the physical distances, filling the cultural voids.
In a network made of people.
This is the incipit of the foreword I wrote to Giancarlo Livraghi‘s book “L’umanità dell’internet“, published in Italy about fifteen years ago.
A lot of time went by, but this is still the reason why I use the Internet.
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* Questo è il testo originale:
Siamo l’umanità dell’internet. Non fateci passare per mostri. O per stregoni. O per “vendicatori mascherati”. Siamo semplicemente persone animate da una grande voglia di conoscere e di comunicare. Superando le distanze fisiche. Colmando quelle culturali. In una rete fatta di persone.
Notwithstanding the Data Retention Directive has been bashed by the EUCJ Ruling, there is a wide agreement on the fact that its national implementation might still be valid if not in contrast with the main Data Protection Directive.
Just yet, neither the Italian Parliament nor the Data Protection Authority ran the “stress test”, thus leaving ISPs into a void of uncertainty.
Furthermore, the news is new as today, there is a case where the actual providing of Internet access whose contract terminated back in 2010 has been challenged in court by the former customer. Under the Italian Supreme Court jurisprudence, in this case it is the ISP who must provide the evidence that the agreement has been fulfilled. But, guess what? Under the strict (and wrong) interpretation of the Data Retention Directive this ISP deleted the log files and now has problem in supporting its defense.
True, keeping the traffic data for legitimate purposes (such as legal defense) is allowed by the Data Protection Directive.
True, the Data Retention Directive can be interpreted as an exception that doesn’t overrule the Data Protection Directive.
True, an ISP has more than a chance (in theory) to successfully support its choice of keeping the traffic data for legal defense purposes even exceeding the mandatory term seth forth by the DRD.
But all this means fighting an all-round legal battle, explaining to the Court that the traffic data have been legally retained and are, thus, valid evidence, standing against a possible Data Protection Authority investigation, and so on.
To put it short: a waste of time, money and resources, that could be spared if only the Powers-that-be had dedicated a fraction of their time to solve this riddle, instead of toying with this Internet Bill of Right nonsense.