DPA case 9670001 – €49,999 Fine (Italy, 2021)

Mr. Cateno De Luca, current Mayor of the City of Messina, posts images on the Facebook page "De Luca Mayor of Messina." A report by a collection of associations for the protection of citizens and consumers described how the Facebook page is frequently used in order to publish personal data, often contained in videos and images, of subjects described as criminals. This exposes the subjects to comments by social network users that are harmful to their dignity. Such images and videos are posted without guaranteeing any protection to the most vulnerable categories of data subjects, such as minors and people in conditions of social and economic difficulty. This is evidenced by the sharing of a video on the page that portrays people, including a minor, littering on the street, and the sharing of images of non-European homeless people sleeping outside a public building. The Mayor responded that he posted these materials hoping to bring attention to the problem of urban crime (a matter of pubic interest), and that the age of the data subjects cannot be ascertained from the video. All photos and images were left on the Facebook page after the complaint was made, except for the video of people littering, which was taken down. An initial investigation by the Guarante found that these incidents, along with the posting of other images and videos, was neither supported by a legal basis nor justified by the public interest. It further expressed that these posting appear to be an expression of the initiative of the individual (Cateno De Luca) rather than an expression of the Mayoral office. Through investigation, the Garante found other materials of concern on the Facebook page: images of people of people in conditions of economic and social difficulty, an image of a disabled boy detailing his residential address, videos of minors described as being from a “slum,” imaged detailing the health conditions of a child in need, and offensive posts threatening employees of the mayor. I