A side-effect generated by the Datagate scandal is the privacy hysteria exploitation to sell encryption-based services. Taking apart some obvious exceptions (business transactions, health information, judiciary data) these services are useless, ineffective and dangerous for the citizen an such and for the society. Continue reading “The Datagate and the Risk of Outlawing Encryption”
The freedom of being a stone-age man or I don’t want to live “smart”
One of the most revealing books I’ve read (that I translated into Italian for local publisher) is Alan Cooper‘s The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Is a book about programming and the fact that core decisions come from a bunch of geeks working down below the basement of the company’s building, while marketing and PR guys occupy the fancy upper floors (have you seen the British sit-com “The IT Crowd“?) Continue reading “The freedom of being a stone-age man or I don’t want to live “smart””
Computer search and seizure. An odd law is coming…
The Italian center-left wing has proposed a bill (currently passed in Senate, and now to be examined in the other chamber) that allows the law enforcement to obtain the use of computer seized during computer-crime related investigation, early before the final judgement comes to an end.
The “idea” backing the proposal (that will likely become a full-force law in a few time) is that there is no harm for the defendant if the police uses his computer waiting for the trial. At the end of the day, if the defendant will be acquitted – says the accompaining text to the draft law – he will get his computer back, and will start using it as if nothing happened. The reason for this law – this is clearly stated – is to give the brand new computers used for criminal purposes to the law enforcement agencies that still use old and crappy technology at no cost.
This is the very same approach adopted for houses and vehicles used by drug dealers and mafia mobs so in principle there shouldn’t be a particular concern for this new law.
Personally I disagree from this statement, since a computer is something different than a car or some other premises. It stores information often unrelated to the investigated crime, and/or information related to innocent third parties.
Why should these people be exposed to a mass infringement of their personal life?
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.
🙂
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.