Garante-Report, clash over Meta glasses: 'The service should not be broadcast'. Ranucci: "They try to stop us"

There is still a clash between Report and the Garante per la Privacy. To light the fuse, on the eve of Sunday's episode, is a report on Meta's smart glasses, anticipated in summary on the social networks of the programme. A journalistic enquiry 'devoid of any foundation, the result either of a lack of knowledge of the discipline of the subject or, worse, of bad faith', thunders the Authority, hoping that 'the programme will refrain from transmitting, under the terms announced, the service'. But Sigfrido Ranucci does not agree: 'We are faced with yet another attempt by the Garante to block the broadcasting of a RAI programme.

In any case, the company has not received any formal request to block either the service or the programme, Viale Mazzini said. A week ago, on the other hand, panel member Agostino Ghiglia had warned the editorial staff against broadcasting the report on his involvement in the proceedings that led to the fine on the case of the audio of former minister Gennaro Sangiuliano. Investigation then regularly broadcast.

The focus this time is on a meeting, which took place in October 2024, between Ghiglia and the institutional head of Meta in Italy 'before the Garante's decision on a 44 million fine'. "The first model of smart glasses has been under the lens of the Authority," Report explains on its Facebook profile, "because it would have violated some aspects related to the privacy of both the users and the people filmed. The departments proposed a fine of EUR 44 million, but the college disagreed. The day after a meeting between Agostino Ghiglia and Angelo Mazzetti, Meta's institutional manager in Italy, the fine was lowered. Will Meta eventually pay the fine?". 'In August 2024 the college, not knowing how to handle this new technology, hypothesises the archiving of the proceedings or referral to the Irish authority, but among the guarantors there are those who hypothesise a loss of revenue,' is reconstructed in the clip, which reports a stance taken by Ginevra Cerrina Feroni, vice-president of the Guarantor: 'Here there is a penalty of 44 million euro that we do not impose. Here there may also be other liability profiles, OK? Because in any case it is money that does not enter the state coffers. This is a very delicate and very, very serious matter. And I do not take responsibility'.

The day after the meeting between Ghiglia and Mazzetti - is Report's reconstruction - 'the Board, having softened Meta's position, reduces the fine from EUR 44 million to 12.5 million. The penalty goes from 1% of annual turnover to 0.28%". In the Authority's opinion, "no risk, not even potential, of damage to the state budget was ever configured in the course of the proceedings in which the College simply decided - at the end of an articulate discussion of a new and particularly complex case never dealt with by any other Authority for the protection of personal data in Europe - not to adhere to a mere proposal for sanctioning coming from the offices responsible for the investigation, not sharing the factual and legal assumptions".

Hence the hope that, "having taken note of the above and carried out the necessary in-depth legal investigations, the programme will refrain from broadcasting, under the terms announced, the service relating to smart glasses," is the exhortation of the Guarantor, who reserves "any appropriate assessment regarding the initiatives to be taken in the competent fora. Ranucci goes on: 'Report does not say that there is a possible loss to the public purse, but the member of the Garante himself says so in the person of Professor Ginevra Cerrina Feroni: she herself hypothesises loss to the public purse, she herself hypothesises responsibility, we are certainly not the ones to say so. We recount a fact as it unfolded. Rather explain why they made that measure disappear. That should be a matter for the Court of Auditors, which is responsible for ruling on possible financial damage. And if the Court of Auditors knows, it is thanks to Report. We did a simple public service operation,' he concludes.