<!– –>
While the court jesters distract us with how bad and illiberal Salvini is, the state also enters the underwear of Italians.
Thinking that the public employees of the municipality or the mayor can know the banking and financial activity of their citizens does you horror? From today it will be possible with an East German-style option of the pre-Berlin Wall Socialist Republics wanted by the government led by M5S, Pd, Leu and Italia Viva which included it in the Simplification Decree recently approved, eliminating another piece of the individual freedoms and banking confidentiality of the Italians.
Formally Municipalities and Regions, like all other local authorities, will be able to “spy” on sensitive banking data of citizens in order to facilitate the collection of taxes and duties of their competence, even in a compulsory manner, due by the defaulting taxpayer. An activity that is also understandable but that in the way it is operated raises many questions about how it will have to be exercised, with what limitations and constraints, with what possible damage, given the extensive amount of violations that occur in the Municipalities and especially in the smaller ones, where everyone they know each other and public bodies are decisive in defining benefits and concessions.
Knowing in depth the financial data of its citizens is not a trivial matter. For Istat, only the exchange vote in Italy affects at least 1 million 700,000 people, but the figure seems underestimated. And knowing that in recent years the number of crimes of public officials in the public administration has been growing does not make the most critics sleep peacefully with the government’s provision. Is this a step towards the police state or towards Communist China? Difficult to say.
Access until yesterday was only allowed to the Revenue Agency, the Guardia di Finanza and the collection agents. In order to see this information, the Guardia di Finanza itself had to apply for authorization to the Revenue Agency (the only body to have almost automatic access). But from today everything changes. Local authorities already had the possibility of processing the data contained in the tax registry but with the approved Decree, just published in the Official Gazette, they will be able to access the archive of all financial reports, changing the situation considerably.
To tell the truth, the Simplification Decree also provides for a series of precautions to avoid any unlawful conduct. Authorization will be required for access to information and tracking of individual officers authorized for operations, in order to avoid illegal use of information to the detriment of citizens. But the novelty opens up a disturbing scenario given the extreme sensitivity of the data. It will always be our justice to settle any disputes on leaks. We are in an iron blow given the continuous leak of news that occurs in our judicial system.
–