Abstract
The Covid-19 global outbreak showed that big data gathering is an issue of international and national public health. According to comparative experience carried out especially in Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea contagion containment action should take place through the coordinated use of tests and tracking of infected contacts. From the end of March 2020, the Italian authorities started to prepare preparations for non-pharmaceutical interventions in order to be able to reactivate economic life and prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the country. From this perspective, the massive collection of personal data related to Covid-19 could present a possible opportunity for the elaboration of predictive models, especially after an open discussion involving experts and public opinion about the effectiveness of the enforcement of AI models. The main challenge here was to persuade people to download and use the app, showing trust in public policies and strategies planned by the Italian Government against the Covid-19 outbreak. In order to collect massive personal data according to the relevant constitutional and legal provisions, the Italian Government promoted a Law-decree No. 28/2020 regarding urgent measures for the introduction of a national Covid-19 alert system. It was called “Immuni”. This regulation disciplines the collection and management of big data through a black box. Regarding privacy protection, this law establishes some guarantees for users, and for this purpose any person, on a voluntary basis, can download a special software application, respecting the transparency principle and providing the proper information regarding the legal framework of this data collection. According to the Italian government, privacy protection, individual consent, and local data management were considered preferable to mandatory traceability and centralised management of the same data. However, first empirical analysis underlined that Italian people did not seem confident in the Immuni app since only 10 million people (over 60 million people of Italian population) downloaded it. Some questions about its public dissemination among citizens could emerge.