by Eric J. Lyman
ROME, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Two of Italy's top officials took aim at big U.S.-based digital multinationals in remarks made at the annual parliamentary address for the heads of the country's data protection authority.
Antonello Soro, the head of Italy's Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali (Guarantor for the Protection of Personal Data), said companies like Alphabet, a subsidiary of Google; social media powerhouse Facebook; and retail giant Amazon.com had a "gigantic wealth of knowledge" about their consumers.
At the parliamentary meeting on Tuesday, he called the companies the "Big Brothers" of the Internet, a reference to George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four where a character called "Big Brother" watched over everyone's activities.
"These companies can focus their influence on any one of us," Soro said.
Ahead of Soro's address, Laura Boldrini, Speaker of the lower house of Italy's parliament, mentioned the same three companies plus computer maker Apple, and called for "clearer and stronger" regulations to make sure the firms paid their fair share of taxes in Italy.
"It is clear that the commercial exploitation of data is under the spotlight" for Italy's data privacy regulator, Paolo Balboni, president of the Euroepan Privacy Association, said in an interview.
Italy has already been focused on some of those companies. In May, Google settled a 318-million-euro (358 million U.S. dollar) tax investigation in Italy, just three days after tax officials opened a tax probe into Amazon worth at least 130 million euros (146 million U.S. dollars). In late 2015, Apple settled its own tax case for 318 million euros.
Facebook has so far not been named in a tax probe.
Soro's address was the main event at the parliamentary session, attended by lawmakers and government officials led by Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
Soro also discussed the dangers of cyber attacks, something he said cost Italian companies as much as nine billion euros in 2016. Soro also warned of the risks for individuals who fail to protect images and posts uploaded to social media like Facebook and Twitter.
In his remarks, Soro also asked lawmakers to increase his budget and to allot for additional hires as Italy prepares to integrate the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is the first major overhaul of European data protection laws in a generation.
The reform dramatically increases potential sanctions for rule breakers in a wide range of areas, including the ways data is handled, individual privacy rights, or disregarding orders from privacy regulators. The measure will enter into force in Italy in May 2018. (1 euro = 1.13 U.S. dollars)
