A meeting took place in recent days in Rome at the headquarters of the Data Protection Authority between Antonello Soro, Chairman of the Authority, and Frank La Rue, special rapporteur of the United Nations for the promotion and protection of freedom of expression. The meeting is prior to the official visit that La Rue will make to Italy in November in view of the next report that the UN envoy will have to draw. The talks focused on the relationship between privacy and freedom of information and on the concerns about the proliferation of new forms of mass surveillance, through the Internet and telecommunications systems, come to light after the “Datagate” case. President Soro has expressed to the UN envoy the need to raise a genuine culture of data protection in the digital world. Soro pointed out that firm opposition should be made to the indiscriminate and abnormal collection of data of millions of citizens, carried out by U.S. authorities and by some European countries. And this also to prevent so much arbitrary and invasive monitoring from undermining confidence in the Internet. Frank La Rue has focused his reflection on the duty of the states to ensure the safety of citizens working within the boundaries of democracy, because “democracy is not possible without privacy”. Privacy and freedom of information, the UN envoy has highlighted, are closely related and interdependent. Without adequate laws and rules that ensure confidentiality in communications, journalists, human rights defenders and ordinary citizens risk to see their fundamental rights irremediably compromised.
(From Newsletter of the Italian Data Protection Authority no. 378 of September 17, 2013)