Paolo Guarda

Towards the development of privacy-aware systems

Privacy and data protection are pivotal issues in nowadays society. They concern the right to prevent the dissemination of sensitive or confidential information of individuals. Many studies have been proposed on this topic from various perspectives, namely sociological, economic, legal, and technological. We have recognized the legal perspective as being the basis of all other perspectives. Actually, data protection regulations set the legal principles and requirements that must be met by organizations when processing personal data. The objective of this work is to provide a reference base for the development of methodologies tailored to design privacy-aware systems to be compliant with data protection regulations.

Security Analysis and Legal Compliance Checking for the Design of Privacy-friendly Information Systems

Nowadays, most of business practices involve personal data-processing of customers and employees. This is strictly regulated by legislation to protect the rights of the data subject. Enforcing regulation into enterprise information system is a non-trivial task that requires an interdisciplinary approach. This paper presents a declarative framework to support the specification of information system designs, purpose-aware access control policies, and the legal requirements derived from the European Data Protection Directive. This allows for compliance checking via a reduction to policy refinement that is supported by available automated tools. We briefly discuss the results of the compliance analysis with a prototype tool on a simple but realistic scenario about the processing of personal data to produce salary slips of employees in an Italian organization.

From electronic health records to personal health records: emerging legal issues in the Italian regulation of e-health

In 2012, the Italian Legislator has provided an appropriate legal framework for the realisation of the national Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, in which the patient plays a pivotal role: with the implementation of the Fascicolo sanitario elettronico (FSE), patients will have access to their EHRs through the online platform, and decide which data to share and with whom. In this perspective, one of the most interesting innovations is the so-called ‘taccuino’, a digital space of patients’ FSE in which they can autonomously record data and information relating to their health. Patients’ ability to access their own health data and EHR at any time and to enter information by themselves in a personal area is a unique form of power at a European level, but their legal consequences are still vague. The aim of this contribution is to offer a first review of the Italian e-health reform, showing the most critical aspects.

Open Access, Open Science, Open Society

Open Access’ main goal is not the subversion of publishers’ role as driving actors in an oligopolistic market characterised by reduced competition and higher prices. OA’s main function is to be found somewhere else, namely in the ability to subvert the power to control science’s governance and its future directions (Open Science), a power that is more often found within the academic institutions rather than outside. By decentralising and opening-up not just the way in which scholarship is published but also the way in which it is assessed, OA removes the barriers that helped turn science into an intellectual oligopoly even before an economic one. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that Open Access is a key enabler of Open Science, which in turn will lead to a more Open Society. Furthermore, the paper argues that while legislative interventions play an important role in the top-down regulation of Open Access, legislators currently lack an informed and systematic vision on the role of Open Access in science and society. In this historical phase, other complementary forms of intervention (bottom-up) appear much more “informed” and effective. This paper, which intends to set the stage for future research, identifies a few pieces of the puzzle: the relationship between formal and informal norms in the field of Open Science and how these impact on intellectual property rights, the protection of personal data, the assessment of science and the technology employed for the communication of science.

Biobanks and Electronic Health Records: Open Issues

This paper provides the description of possible, desirable interactions between biobanks and the genetic data they process on the one side, and a regulatory concept that is becoming crucial in the European and Italian privacy law context, namely Electronic Health Records (EHR) on the other. The computerized processing of personal health data via digital platforms has received by the Italian Data Protection Authority a regulatory definition which appears to be quite narrowly constructed around the idea that this kind of data treatment will be authorized only if carried on for the purpose of providing a medical service for the therapeutic or diagnostic benefit of the patient.

Tecnologie digitali applicate all’apprendimento del diritto: ipertesti, software didattici e scienze cognitive

The starting point of every refl ection upon new teaching methods has to be the comprehension that new technologies applied to learning methodology give us the possibility to arrange a teaching system focused on the real cognitive processes of our brain. The proliferation of the internet in every fi eld of study is inducing new ways of representing, preserving, and passing on knowledge, which has signifi cant consequences to our manner of thinking and processing data. This paper discusses the changes that this new phenomenon could induce to the future of teaching and learning the methodology of law, and presents an analysis of the several tools involved in this process. 1 Introduzione E’ ormai consueto il sentire pronunciare il termine anglosassone e-learning nelle facolta di giurisprudenza da parte di professori e ricercatori sempre piu atterriti dalle masse di persone che riempiono le aule dei loro corsi. Quando pero si parla di apprendimento assistito da calcolatore ancora molte, anzi troppe, sono le incomprensioni ed i falsi miraggi che questo tipo di tecnologia di assistenza alla didattica crea. Si badi bene, non si sta affermando che l’e-learning non abbia e non avra degli effetti dirompenti; e sicuro pero che, almeno nel breve periodo, esso comportera un investimento in ordine di tempo e risorse, umane ed economiche, che atterrira molti e li portera, spesso, a non capire con esattezza la reale portata di questo cambiamento. Ecco perche l’implementazione di nuovi metodi di didattica nelle aule di giurisprudenza sara probabilmente opera di pochi argonauti alla ricerca del “vello d’oro”. In questo scritto si cerchera allora di descrivere il fenomeno dandogli un corpo ed una faccia. Cominciamo: e-learning, ma chi e costui? L’espressione e-learning si riferisce all’applicazione delle nuove tecnologie infor