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EU:a State-approved professional to connect a router to a socket? Italy already got it

The “discovery” that Italy is going to enforce the EU directive 2008/63/CE by imposing that only a State-approved professional can connect a router to a socket has generated some sort of ? hype among those who’re not familiar with the Italian legal system. Since 1992, in fact, ? the decree of the Ministry of communication n.314 already establish such burden (and sanction those who don’t comply.)

The true news is that – should the government actually revise the old regulation – things can only get worse…

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Amazon.it to infringe Italian data protection law?

I’m an old Amazon.com customer and I’m very happy that the Company finally landed in Italy.
It is odd, nevertheless, that Amazon.it’s data protection policy (informativa sul trattamento dei dati personali) is not fully compliance with the Italian Data Protection Code, since mandatory information are missed:
– the identity of the data controller (responsabile del trattamento)
– how long will Amazon handle the personal data
– what will happen when the data handling is no more necessary
– the rights belonging to the data subject (diritti dell’interessato) under sect. 7-13 of the Italian Data Protection Code
Further more Amazon.it’s privacy procedure fails to collect the explicit consent of the data subject for the data processing and didn’t collect the specific consent to handle the sensitive data (those related to customers who purchase political, philosophical, and/or healt-related books.)
This situation, then, poses an interesting question: is Amazon.it actually infringing its customer personal privacy rights?
Strictly speaking, the answer is yes because the law has been breached. Nevertheless I’ll keep purchasing books through Amazon services since I feel more protected by Amazon ethical commitment than by a bunch of legal lingo.
Fact is that bureaucracy asks for its lamb to be sacrificed.
🙂

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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”.