Category: Privacy and Data Protection

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L?gion ?trang?re and Kamikaze. Dangerous Rethorical Stunt of Italian Politicians and Media

Undersecretary Marco Minniti, superseeding the Italian Intelligence activities on behalf of the Government, gave out his two cents about the war on terrorism – the Italian Way, announcing a private-public project to fight cyberterrorism and claiming that Europe hosts the?L?gion ?trang?re of Terror.
Here is the screen-shot of his statement:
ForeignLegionWell, I don’t want to talk about the merit of the cyberterrorism response of his announcement. It is too early to actually assess a proposal that ranges from catastrophically ineffective to functional.

Let’s wait and see, but in the meantime I’ve found grossly misinformed and misleading the association Mr. Minniti? did between the terrorist forces and the French L?gion ?trang?re. It is a fact that people from many different countries are joining the terrorist camp, but in no way this can be compared to what (like it or not) the L?gion is.

What I find rather disappointing is that to obtain a rhetorical stunt in front of the Press, a politician that is supposed to know better just let slip easy and wrong messages. I can imagine a newspaper’s title when the next attack will strike: “Terror Foreign Legion vs France’s Foreign Legion!” Awful sounding isn’t it?

This is what happened so far with the word “Kamikaze” whose meaning has been turned upside down by the Italian media.

Kamikaze was (and still is) the name for a desperate military tactic (BTW, not so different from the one Winston Churchill thought of fighting German panzers in case of invasion of the British soil) conceived by an army against another army, and has nothing to do with the exploitation of an individual as human bomb carrier targeting people with non combatants status.

Words’meaning grip loss leads to confused ideas, and cloudy thoughts produce wrong decision.

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Italy To Storm Playstation Networks? The Steve Jackson Game Case Strikes Back

According to Andrea Orlando, Italian Minister of Justice, Italy plans to fight? the war on terrorism on Playstations.

In a press conference, Mr. Orlando said that new technologies are exploited by terrorists, and it is imperative to keep pace with the innovation, by allowing the capability to wiretap chat (whatever this means) and Playstations.

Apart from the merit of the issue (we might either agree or not about the strategy, but this is a horse of different colour) what matters is the clear uneasiness of the Minister in? talking about topics he’s clearly not knowledgeable in.

I really wander how the law enforcement agencies will be able to extract something useful by wiretapping network games that deal with assaults, terrorist actions, covert operation and so on.

Will they be able to sort the truth from the game?

Are we on the verge of a new Steve Jackson Games scandal?

The usual approximation showed by a politician in charge of taking the lead on technology-related issues shows that key decision on such a sensitive matters are made elsewhere, by someone else not at all well versed in the matter. And it would be interesting to know who this “Mr. Someoneelse” actually is.

To have a better grasp on the operative issues before talking to the Press,? maybe it wouldn’t had been a bad idea? for the Minister to spend some spare time playing Call of duty or Splinter cell.

 

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Microsoft Blog Post on Safe Harbour. A Different Perspective

The collapse of the US-EU Safe Harbor: Solving the new privacy Rubik?s Cube is a post on the official Microsoft’s blog that is gaining momentum since it is possibly the first “cooled down” analysis of the EUCJ decision on Safe Harbour. Though well articulated, nevertheless, I think that the “hook” where the chain of reasoning hangs is weak.

I don’t think we should go for “global laws” because of the technological evolution.

“Global laws” means “Single Government” or, in other words, the end of democracy.

From a legal standpoint, the technological evolution is irrelevant because technology only affects the way things are done and not the right to do it.

You don’t need to amend the provision that punishes killing or manslaughtering everytime that somebody figure out some “creative” mode to put a R.I.P. stone over somebody else head. Or, dealing with the technological “evolution”, you don’t need a new provision to sanction hate speeches, personal life intrusions, libel and defamation, stalking and so on “just” because of the Internet. The illegal behaviours were already there before the computer era.

Furthermore, we all know that law is rather Lobbyists’s pressures, political mediation, economic and financial differences driven, than God-inspired.

Guess who would going to write this “Global Regulation”?

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Safe Harbour and the Shortsighted Data Protection Authorities

After the EU Commission met the industry (I was there on behalf of an European industry association) to hear the voice of the business, yesterday it met the Article29 working party (the EU gathering of the national Data Protection Authorities) to explore the possibility of of a short-term solution to avoid exposing thousand and thousand of innocent companies to investigations and fines for “infringing” the data protection directive after the Safe Harbour has been stricken down by the EU Court of justice.

The outcome of this meeting has been very simple: the Data Protection Authorities just couldn’t agree on the possibility of using standard model clauses or binding corporate rules as a viable Safe Harbour alternative, refused to agree on the fact that companies relying upon the Safe Harbour for about fifteen years are entitled to a grace period and feared of no being able to stop the data flow toward the US because of the lack of resources. To put it short: the industry has been left without certainties, victim of potential legal complains, but with no alternative but carry on its activities.

I don’t know if this folks at the Article29 actually live on Mother Earth or in Outer Space. Fact is that such kind of attitude – blindly following a (questionable) reading of the EU data protection directive – is a danger for the international economic system as well as for the safety of the citizens.