Italy's Privacy Chief: Don't Spy On Kids To Protect Them!
Pasquale Stanzione Warns Europe: Child Safety Must Not Become Mass Surveillance.

The World Newsreel - 5 novembre 2026

There is a peculiar temptation in modern government: whenever a new danger appears, somebody proposes collecting more information about everybody.

Children are exposed to manipulation, addiction and inappropriate content on the internet. The proposed solution? Verify their ages, monitor their activities and give adults more instruments of control.

But who protects the children from the protectors?

That is the question raised by Pasquale Stanzione, President of Italy's Data Protection Authority, in his October 28 testimony before the Italian Chamber of Deputies concerning the European Union's proposed EU Kids Act.

Stanzione is not opposing age verification. Nor is he defending the commercial practices of digital platforms.

Quite the contrary.

He supports stronger safeguards against addictive platform design, manipulative recommendation systems, profiling and potentially harmful interactions with artificial intelligence.

His warning concerns the methods.

Age verification must not become an excuse for collecting unnecessary personal information. Parental supervision must not eliminate the privacy of the children it is supposed to protect.

And legislation intended to defend young people must not deprive them of the gradual autonomy that growing up necessarily requires.

THE RIGHT TO GROW UP

The distinction is important.

A child is neither an adult with unlimited freedom nor a prisoner whose every movement must be recorded.

Childhood is a process through which dependence gradually becomes independence.

Stanzione therefore advocates differentiated protections according to age and risk, accompanied by appropriate parental guidance.

He also draws attention to an emerging problem: artificial intelligence systems capable of simulating emotional relationships with young users.

The danger is no longer confined to what children may see on a screen.

It increasingly concerns the relationships they may believe they are experiencing.

EUROPE'S NEW DILEMMA

The European Union has good reasons to intervene.

Digital platforms operate across national borders, while the legal rules governing children's access to them remain fragmented.

But harmonisation is not automatically protection.

A common European system of age verification could improve safety. Poorly designed, it could also create an enormous new infrastructure for identifying and monitoring internet users.

The problem is therefore not simply whether Europe should regulate.

It is how Europe can regulate without producing a machinery of surveillance more extensive than the danger it was created to prevent.

Stanzione's intervention offers a useful answer: data minimisation, proportionate safeguards, responsible platform design and what he calls digital paideia — an education in the intelligent and responsible use of technology.

THE LAST WORD

For too long, the debate about children and the internet has oscillated between two equally unconvincing propositions.

The technology companies insist that innovation must remain free.

Governments reply that safety requires control.

Stanzione reminds both sides that there is a third party in this argument.

The child.

And that child is not merely an object of protection, but a future citizen learning how to exercise freedom.

Protecting children is a duty.

Teaching them to live without perpetual supervision is part of that duty.

A society that teaches children they must always be watched should not be surprised when they grow up believing that freedom is dangerous.