What happened to Gaia-X and European data sovereignty?
About what Ferruccio de Bortoli of Corriere della Sera wrote about digital sovereignty. Giordano Alborghetti's speech
Dear director,
Ferruccio de Bortoli wrote in Corriere della Sera : "Escaping Chinese and even more so Russian influences, it would also be appropriate to ask ourselves whether handing over data considered strategic to American partners fully meets the established criteria of digital sovereignty."
A reflection came to me spontaneously, taking up what I wrote in an article that appeared on these pages in May 2022 "How the EU can achieve digital sovereignty".
Unfortunately, to date the situation has not improved, indeed with the advent of the so-called Artificial Intelligence it has worsened further, increasingly handing over our data and our privacy to American Big Tech.
Furthermore, the Gaia-X project , cloud services and European data centers, seems to have stalled, at least this is what can be seen from the Italian site with the last article dated September 2023. Italian politics, in its entirety without exception, seems far from the issues of Digital Sovereignty, preferring to rely on "experts", but as the history of recent years has taught us, experts rarely act to protect national interests and the good of citizens, if anything they move to protect the interests of large multinationals as well as protecting their interests.
I take the liberty of observing that de Bortoli writes some inaccuracies when he writes "deliver the data to American partners", because in fact we have already been handing them over for years, both strategic and personal data, all of this was denounced by Edward Snowden in 2013. Just as de Bortoli is wrong, again, when he writes ".. fully meets the established criteria of digital sovereignty".
Here too I take inspiration from my presentation, to reiterate that the only valid concept on the subject of Digital Sovereignty is: "In extreme summary, the ability for nations, businesses, schools, universities, individuals, to have full control of their data, of the software that is used. In practice, being able to be independent and autonomous with respect to both American and Chinese Bit Techs, developing our own safe and sustainable technologies, capable of competing on a global level".
The choice is always the same and the only way forward, not for a fideistic or digital religious issue, and is the use of open source operating systems and free software. Bearing in mind that virtuous examples exist and should be encouraged and adequately nurtured. I take for example the GARR Consortium which demonstrates how an alternative route is possible.
How do we get out of all this? That is, how is it possible to translate the concept of Digital Sovereignty into free software? It is in fact a combination that must keep various factors together: having an ethical, moral and economic vision – I remember that even today 85% of Big Tech's revenues go first to European countries with preferential taxation, then to tax havens (yes read the Mediobanca data “ The giants of the web ”) -, a sociopolitical vision, again in Masters of the Web I wrote: “The dominance of the masters of the web is already evident and irrefutable. Failure to intervene today from a legislative point of view will determine their unstoppable influence not only in the IT sector but in all areas, with permanent damage for the next generations", a technological and educational vision. To keep all this together we should turn to what is still, as I wrote above, the great absentee: politics.
To raise awareness, for example, a conference on Digital Sovereignty in an open source way should be organized.
Best regards
Giordano Alborghetti
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/gaia-x-sovranita-digitale-unione-europea/ on Wed, 20 Mar 2024 07:34:54 +0000.