A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #16-26 - Poste Italiane: Opaque Communication. Apps, Platforms, and Control - Excluding "Security" (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei 
dati personali) has fined Poste Italiane and Postepay over EUR12 
million. The reason is simple: to use the BancoPosta and Postepay apps, 
millions of users were, in effect, forced to authorize the monitoring of 
their devices, including installed and running applications. This isn't 
a technical detail, but a political decision. ---- According to the 
Authority, those methods were excessive and not strictly necessary for 
the security of operations. In other words, the service could have been 
protected without reaching that level of intrusion. Yet, the decision 
was made.

This is where the case stops being a breach and becomes something more. 
Not a mistake, but a model, because we're not dealing with just any 
actor. Poste Italiane is a listed company, of course, but over 60% of 
its capital is under the direct or indirect control of the State. At the 
same time, it is generating record profits: over EUR2 billion in 2025, 
growing revenues and dividends, and even higher prospects for 2026.

It's not a technical necessity. It's a choice. And it concerns a solid, 
profitable, and central entity, controlled by the state.

The new 2026-2031 Program Agreement between the Ministry of Business and 
Made in Italy and Poste Italiane clarifies the direction: Poste is no 
longer just the universal postal service provider, but an integrated 
platform for logistics, financial, digital, and administrative services. 
With the Polis project, post offices become public administration 
branches. It's no longer just about distributing services, but about 
concentrating functions: a single entity that manages essential 
services, mediates the relationship with the public administration, 
operates on the market, and develops its own digital platforms. The 
telephone becomes the entry point, and access becomes a condition. To 
use essential services, it's no longer enough to adhere to formal rules; 
you need to accept devices, applications, and authorizations that extend 
visibility into your digital habits.

The result is increasingly concentrated power, not only in the 
management of services but also in the ability to observe, record, and 
analyze behavior.

Millions of people use tools they don't really know every day. 
Applications that request often opaque permissions, that collect 
information, that track activities. Not necessarily for direct and 
continuous control, but to build the possibility of control.

Our data is collected every day, every moment. It fuels services, 
systems, business models, and generates profits for those who use them. 
It's not a side effect: it's part of how things work.

This shift is not neutral. It creates new inequalities: between those 
who are able to navigate digital tools and those who remain 
marginalized; between those who have skills, time, and access and those 
who don't; between those who can govern these tools and those who are 
forced to accept them.

Technology that promises simplification thus ends up selecting, 
excluding, and hierarchizing, to the point of producing obvious short 
circuits: administrations sending a registered letter to notify people 
that a fine can be viewed and paid via smartphone.

What to do then? Stop using your phone? Leave it at home when you go to 
a demonstration? Reject technology?

These are recurring questions, but they risk shifting the problem onto 
individual behavior, as if the solution were to avoid it.

The crux of the matter lies elsewhere.

Is it possible to build a world where technology does not dominate? 
Where access to services does not imply surveillance, and innovation 
does not coincide with the extension of control?

This is where the game is played.

Totò Caggese

https://umanitanova.org/poste-italiane-la-comunicazione-opaca-app-piattaforme-e-controllo-la-sicurezza-escludente/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en