The contribution of the cameras – or rather, of the video surveillance systems – was fundamental in identifying the suspect in the attempted murder of a tourist committed in Rome at the end of 2022. This has revived the controversy over the use of control technologies and the “risks for privacy” generated by the creation of a surveillance society “under the guise of security”.
History
Privacy and facial recognition: an Italian startup’s adversative clothes will hide us from AIs
by Emanuele Capone
At least in this case the diligent “defenders of privacy” were forced, obtorto neck, to accept the fact that not so much the cameras themselves as the possibility of extracting information from the video footage has been decisive for identifying a suspect. Faced with the evidence of the facts, they retreat a few steps but do not give up denouncing the danger of mass surveillance which remains extremely dangerous especially – obviously – the one created “thanks to AI”.
Shoah
Rename Holocaust victims and survivors with facial recognition
by Carlo Lavalle
We are faced with a conceptually, juridically and factually questionable position, built on the paranoia for privacy inherited from US anthropology, on the “Frankenstein syndrome” – the fear that the “monster” rebels against its creator – and on applying a “precautionary principle”, devoid of any objective foundation, on the basis of which the opportunity makes the State a spy. This is not the case in democratic states, certainly not in Italy, but this has not prevented the creation of a vast public and private front “regardless” of the technologies that allow the identification of people filmed in a video. A position that is understood intuitively, but which does not therefore become correct.
The case
The strange story of US biometric scanners resold on eBay
by Simone Cosimi
Let’s start with a factual consideration
Video surveillance systems have become tools to be used after that the crime was committed. They serve less and less a to prevent and more and more to to investigate. They don’t prevent the oxen from leaving the stable, but they help – theoretically – to find them. Sure, there are services that promise to use event recognition and analysis technologies to generate real-time alarms or track things and people. To exploit them, however, one must have enough responsiveness to “stay on all balls”. It is of little use to have such a tool if there is not enough personnel to intervene.
This consideration does not reassure the diligent defenders of privacy, according to whom even the mere possibility of a posteriori recognition represents a risk for democracy because it reinforces the global surveillance apparatus. However, unlike what happens in other countries, despite the technical feasibility of mass surveillance, the nightmare never materialised. How come?
Not many – not even insiders – are really aware of how extensive the surveillance and control powers of the Ministry of the Interior and of the police forces are in Italy. Today – yes, today, in 2023 – on the basis of simple suspicion a public security officer can stop anyone and ask them to identify themselves. The absence of identity documents or the suspicion that they are false allows them to be “accompanied” to the police offices to take fingerprints and proceed with photo reporting. Italy also has its own DNA database, where the genetic samples of convicts end up, and the RIS of the Carabinieri has managed its own. Net of the measures to contrast COVID, one cannot go around misrepresented or masked, hindering the possibility of recognition. It may be a coincidence, but in the recent clashes between fans that took place on the A1, the troublemakers were all dressed the same way, perhaps because this way it would not have been easy, by reviewing the videos of the clashes, to understand “who” had done “what”. The information activity of DIGOS is continuous and constant. In 2001, the Guarantor of personal data “discovered” that the Arma dei Carabinieri maintained an extensive archive of “permanent personal files” but had to acknowledge that it was a completely lawful activity. The police records database is an inexhaustible source of information, as is the duty to disclose the documents of hotel guests and SIM buyers. The suspicion that drug or weapons trafficking is taking place in a private place allows access even without a judge’s order and in cases of urgency – according to article 321 of the Criminal Procedure Code – always without a judge’s order the police judicial can order the blocking of access to network resources (subject to having the deed validated). And we are not opening the chapter of what can be done when it is necessary to carry out telephone, telematic or environmental interceptions. The tax register, which the Guardia di Finanza also has access to, is a very powerful tool for defining the “fiscal profile” of each of us and if it were used more extensively, crossing it with the PRA, the cadastre and the registrar of real estate registers would help strike a deadly blow to tax evasion (but you can’t “because there is privacy”). Until not so long ago, it was mandatory to report the possession of “magnetic archives” in the prefecture and some time before, during the Years of Lead, the police forces received special powers. If we add to this the information that can be extracted from other private databases, such as those of banking and insurance centralized risks, there is no need for “AI-powered” biometric facial recognition to transform Italy into a surveillance state .
Despite all this, Italy today is a country which, unlike others in the East and West, does not practice mass surveillance as a tool for the protection of “national security”. Therefore, there are no factual elements and evidence on the “dangers” deriving from “possible” abuses by the executive with respect to the use of the surveillance and control apparatus available to the public security forces. One therefore wonders why the paranoia that causes the hallucination of seeing the Central Scrutinzer popping up from every street corner — sorry, from every window of a social profile or website — has spread in our country too.
The reasons are varied and not always the result of – albeit sometimes noble – ideological obsessions. On the one hand, undeniably, fomenting the fear of mass surveillance has served to build professional, academic and commercial careers. On the other hand, the hysteria has been fueled by the contradictory attitude of those who want at all costs to be certified as “existing alive” by making available even the most insignificant details of their gray daily routine, but in the meantime cannot bear the idea that someone can take advantage of it by accumulating information. Even more, however, is the distrust in the institutions to form the foundations on which to build the wall to keep away the technology of biometric recognition.
If this distrust can be shared towards countries in which anarchy and exaggerated individualism are constituent elements of the zeitgeist, or where very little hypocritically “Might is Right”, the same approach cannot apply automatically and across the board in other more culturally and legally evolved states such as Italy.
With all the limitations and problems of our system, justice, surveillance and public safety are highly jurisdictionalised. Translated from legalese, this means that today, even if the Ministry of the Interior wanted to, it could not manage such an apparatus in total autonomy because it is always possible – and necessary – to have control by the judiciary. Consequently, there are not and there can be no abstract prejudices of any kind in the use by the authorities of technological systems also based on the processing of biometric data or their analysis through AI. With all due respect (of the not disinterested supporters) of the GDPR and similar regulations. Of course, errors and abuses are always possible even in the private sphere, but they represent the exception, not the rule and therefore we cannot speak of a “danger to democracy” connected to recognition algorithms.
An empirical confirmation of the absence of correlation between state surveillance and danger to democracy comes from the way in which, unlike Italy, Taiwan and South Korea have managed contact tracing for COVID. The widespread and tremendously effective system for collecting and analyzing data relating to citizens’ movements has allowed the adoption of measures that have saved countless lives but in no way have given rise to anti-democratic or authoritarian tendencies. With us, however, effective contact tracing was impossible “because there is privacy”.
It is clear – but evidently not enough – that it is not the instrument that endangers the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, but the low level of democratic stability of the institutions and, ultimately, the insufficient exercise by individuals of rights connected to the status of citizen. It is equally clear – but evidently not enough – that it is not the spread of conspiratorial paranoia, but education in democratic culture that protects people’s rights. It is equally clear – but evidently not enough – that it is not a public debate based on unproven assumptions, but the confrontation with actual reality that allows difficult choices to be made with all the necessary attention.
In conclusion, it must be noted that over the years, the police forces have changed a lot and that the times of the Private Affairs Office and the Borghese coup, however close, are now consigned to history. So, to put it bluntly, if someone really thinks that there is a “danger of mass surveillance” in our country, then they draw the necessary consequences: grab a toy AK47, put on a tissue paper balaclava and go underground with a semi-anonymous account on some social networks, together with Napalm51 and his friends, not before having given consent to the installation of cookies and various profiling. Have you ever seen that in the meantime some advantageous offer arrives to buy yet another new and useless gadget to show off in the next story or in a post with some spot on hashtag.