Privacy: We're overwhelmed by paper but defenseless against telemarketing attacks.

PRIVACY LAWS IN ITALY –

We're suffocated by privacy. Or rather, by a mountain of laws, decrees, and consolidated texts that we've been churning out nonstop for almost twenty years, since 1996 to be precise. All, in theory, to protect our privacy, so-called sensitive data, from a cell phone number to a medical certificate . In practice, however, the effect of this typical Italian-style overabundance of regulations has inflated the weight of a privacy bureaucracy like a bubble, which, instead of reassuring us, distresses us. And it complicates our lives beyond belief. Every time we open a bank account, take out an insurance policy, connect a gas or electricity supply, we're forced to sign authorization, or denial, to process our data. Paper after paper, signature after signature, without even knowing exactly what we're signing up for. The National Association of Surgeons has protested to the Ministry of Health because every doctor, before even the most trivial of operations, even those lasting a quarter of an hour, must fill out 39 pages of documents that the patient then signs. Many of these documents concern privacy. In Lombardy, Governor Roberto Maroni has created a team of "bureaucracy angels," a group of young graduates who assist small businesses with the avalanche of formalities. A significant percentage of this paperwork, which cripples the daily routine of artisans, entrepreneurs, and professionals, concerns privacy protection. And even the world of volunteers has raised an outcry against the excessive bureaucracy that governs the life of non-profit organizations . " We are not the ombudsmen who must protect the privacy of our members, and we cannot waste hours and hours preparing documents that ultimately serve no purpose, " the volunteer associations protested in unison.

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PRIVACY AND BUREAUCRACY IN ITALY –

Faced with a fever of regulations and potential bans, each of us finds ourselves completely defenseless, hands raised in surrender, when the attack on privacy is carried out through other laws, unwritten but highly effective, that have to do with the power of the market. At that point, we become a number to be hammered, a consumer to be chased, day and night, a buyer to be captured until we're trapped. It's the evolution of marketing, and telemarketing, that leaves us no escape . Even when the shadow of this sort of Big Brother, ready to intercept us, doesn't appear. In America, a consumer association has taken to court an IT company hired by a department store chain to track customers while they shop and study them, step by step. In practice, hidden cameras were used to record every reaction of potential buyers to the merchandise on the shelves. "A blatant violation of privacy," the consumer association tried to protest. To no avail. Because the judge recognized the company's right to develop its own marketing policies, as if they were more important than the privacy of a poor housewife unaware she's being filmed while choosing a can of peeled tomatoes. In Italy, telemarketing attacks have no effective barriers, and all it takes is leaving your phone number, perhaps to purchase a plane ticket or order a product through an e-commerce site, and you're done . The risk of being bombarded with promotional offers of all kinds becomes extremely high. Personally, I have an office number registered in the Registry of Opposition: it should therefore be protected from call center attacks. And yet, every week, as punctual as a mortgage payment due, I get a call with some new offer for phone lines, pay TV, insurance, electricity, and gas. At first, I protested, threatening to sue, convinced I had a number safe from professional pests. Then I resigned myself, I learned to politely dismiss the anonymous interlocutor, considering this an exercise in tolerance, and I only hope that a new law doesn't arrive to protect my privacy.

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