Category: Biobanks

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Minnesota’s protests to mark the end of Immuni?

Online contact tracing is changing business: from a means to counter the Coronavirus contagion to a tool of public order. Can we afford it? The analysis of Andrea Monti, Adjunct-Professor in charge of law and order and public safety at the University of Chieti-Pescara
Originally published in Italian by Formiche.net.

A series of tweets from the American network NBC News bounce the news that the authorities in Minnesota plan to use data from Coronavirus contact-tracing software in public order and security operations to contain the antiracist protests broken out over the death of George Floyd caused by a police officer.

This announcement re-ignites the controversy about the risks of abuse by the State, if it is allowed to have at its disposal vast amounts of data of all kinds on citizens and, in Italy, reinforces the position of those who praised the incredible technological complication that “to protect privacy” has delayed and castrated the development of Immuni, the contact tracing software that should warn us if we came into contact with someone who tested positive at Covid-19. Continue reading “Minnesota’s protests to mark the end of Immuni?”

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The German DatenschutzKonferenze to issue non viable GDPR compliance hints for medical research

The Datenschutzkonference (DSK) the body that gathers the German Data Protection Authorities has published a document on the relationship between the Recital 33 of the GDPR and its application to scientific research. And as often happens when this topics is involved, the results are useless, inconsistent and inapplicable. A more detailed analysis will allow us to understand the reason for such a harsh judgment on this document. Continue reading “The German DatenschutzKonferenze to issue non viable GDPR compliance hints for medical research”

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Race is the new black

Since people have been anesthetized to the “privacy threats” that everybody and his cousin is seeing around, now “race” is the new trend to bash profiling, surveillance and whatever else the “human rights ? warriors” pick as “enemy-of-the-day”.

This article from wired.com – that matches the same “philosophy” of this one published by Wired.it about the racism of algorithm – hints at ? a new trend to give trollers something to (keyboard) fight for: forget privacy, RACE is the buzzword-to-go to show righteous indignation!

Algorithms are bad for RACE, Artificial Intelligence is bad for RACE, face recognition is a RACE thing… computer and RACE, smartphone and RACE, videogames and RACE, RACE, RACE, ? RACE, RACE, RACE, RACE, RACE, RACE, RACE, RACE, RACE, RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE, ?RACE.

p.s. Sorry Monty Python.

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Scientific Research: the Italian Data Protection Commissioner Soro to support a very dangerous position about Biobanks

In an interview published by the Italian newspaper “La Stampa” on Oct. 31, 2017 the Italian Data Protection Commissioner Soro stated that:

“If it is true that a profit can be gained from the research on human biological material, is it true – too – that there is no such thing as biobank ownership, but only the right to research the available samples. 1“

Continue reading “Scientific Research: the Italian Data Protection Commissioner Soro to support a very dangerous position about Biobanks”

  1. “Se è vero che si possono ottenere profìtti dalle ricerche sul materiale biologico degli esseri umani, è altrettanto vero non esiste la proprietà di una biobanca, ma solo il diritto a fare studi sui campioni disponibili” – English translation by Andrea Monti. ↩