Data Protection, Information Privacy, and Security Measures: An Essay on the European and the Italian Legal Frameworks

Abstract

The widespread diffusion of computers carries an increasing anxiety on several levels: the awareness that personal data of people could be used in malicious and harmful way; the ever-growing dependence of advanced societies upon computer and computer systems; the vulnerability of these systems; and the violations of them, which has already caused several economic damages and frustrated the users’ reliance. Then we talk about security anxiety. The same concept of security could be used either to refer to data protection of confidential information or to identify the public interest, in order to guarantee and justify a less cogent defense of citizens privacy (for instance, on the national security field). In this case, security becomes a way to unloosen the safeguard to reduce the protection of personal data and to violate privacy.

In the Part II of this essay we will briefly describe the starting point of the right to privacy and we will provide the main framework of European regulation on this matter. The Part III is dedicated to the analysis of security and data protection in the Italian legal system. Last but not least, in the Part IV we will sketch some considerations regarding standards, sources of law, and new technologies.

Keywords: privacy, security, data protection, standard