Transparency vs privacy: Italian tax agency publishes citizens’ tax declarations online

This is huge. Today the Italian Tax Agency published the tax declaration of all Italian citizens online.
Then it was withdrawn because of the protests for privacy reasons.
Apparently the Data Protection Officer authorizes this in 2001 and 2003.
Here is the interview with the then Data Protection Officer, and privacy guru, Stefano Rodota’ (in Italian).
What is really interesting is that the argument he puts in favour of this is that it allows a “widespread control” (controllo diffuso). This is the crowdsourcing of the Tax Inspections!
If this is allowed for tax declaration, then almost every data can become public with this argument.
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UPDATE: even more interesting - the 2 biggest newspapers made an online poll, with each already 20K votes,  and in both cases the majority of votes is in favour
!

This entry was posted on April 30, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Transparency vs privacy: Italian tax agency publishes citizens’ tax declarations online”

  1. wainer lusoli Says:
    May 2, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    well spotted david - this makes a very interesting case study on the tesion between transparency and privacy directives; though tax data has not yet been classed as personal data to my knowledge by article 29 working party; it is the linkability bit that may create some worries, and the externalities of the data is systematically published (for redlining or social exclusion).
    ethically, it touches at the heart of ‘what is public’, thorny issue in italy really; pity for the disgraceful beppe grillo’s declarations; though, i understand where he is coming from, looking at what he earns…
    w

  2. Alberto Cottica Says:
    May 3, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    Well, if it is to be public, it’s got to be on the web. Right?

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