Two years ago I was on vacation in Berlin when I received a message from my friend Rocco Panetta giving me terrible news: Giovanni Buttarelli he had left us. It was news that I hoped not to receive since the then outgoing European Privacy Guarantor had announced his re-nomination despite a terrible illness that gave him many problems, even if he did not show it. In recent times he had limited his speeches in presence at sector events but even on video it was always a good thing to be able to listen to him. Buttarelli, who was a magistrate, had worked side by side with Stefano Rodotà at the Italian Privacy Guarantor and had immediately contributed with him to form the Italian Authority first and then the European one. Many stories about it from Rocco Panetta, founder of the law firm where I work and then he too in the team with Rodotà and Buttarelli at the Guarantor between Rome and Brussels.
Unfortunately I was not lucky enough to be a friend of Giovanni, but we had met on several occasions in Brussels and I was always struck by his kindness and availability in answering my questions on privacy and on that GDPR that was making its way into the world. . The first time happened five years ago when he came as a guest to the master where I was studying and for which I had moved to Brussels. The GDPR, the European regulation for the protection of personal data which in a few years would have been known and copied all over the world, was not yet in force and as a student I was already fascinated by sensing its revolutionary significance. One of the things that still strikes me today was how this rule required the adoption of a simple and clear language. So it was that, thanks to the fact of speaking to a fellow countryman, I began with a “Hello”, before asking my question in English. From that first meeting, I took advantage of every event to ask him some questions attracted by his ability to respond with competence, completeness and vision to any doubts that came to me on those issues for me, and for many, so interesting and often so complex.
Just a few months before he was gone forever, I had met him at the 40th international privacy conference he had organized in Brussels and received the acclaim of Tim Cook, then guest of honor. Tim Cook thanked his friend Giovanni for what he was doing, for how he inspired other countries to care about privacy and to adopt European-like legislation, which Apple’s CEO wished for the United States. On that occasion, it was October 2018 and the GDPR had become effective a few months ago, Buttarelli was not resting on his laurels and was already lighting up the new path to take: establish a sustainable ethics for the digital society. As I reported for Wired then, he did not hide his concerns that humans were delegating more and more to machines, from killer drones to algorithms for deciding sentences, to the carbon emissions required to make the blockchain work, or to the algorithms that decide what we should look at. “All practices that, although legal, have a profound effect on people, society, the environment, human dignity itself. It is time to think of a clear moral code ”.
That day, even knowing it was institutionally inappropriate, I asked Francesco Albinati from his staff if I could take a souvenir photo with him, as he was in fact a beacon for me, for the field I had chosen. Buttarelli, despite being tired after the interviews, did it willingly “but only because I was the biggest Retwicter of the EDPS”.
Luckily Buttarelli left us his Manifesto, full of ideas and above all of his vision, something that I have always appreciated in him because I have always struggled to find it in the people who are in the institutions who are very good with programs but often lack vision. . In that Manifesto he does not hide that today data is power and a sub-class is being created of people who do not have the tools to defend themselves from the abuse of their personal data and who struggle to understand the underlying logic. He talked about the impact of technology on the environment, the need for greater diversity on corporate boards, to impose a moratorium on the adoption of dangerous technologies, including facial recognition for mass surveillance.
Here, this was Giovanni Buttarelli for me, one of the privacy giants who have honored our country in the world.
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