She wanted the passwords of the accounts and I-Cloud of her deceased husband, because she hoped to find there any thoughts and farewell letters, the woman that the Court of Milan authorized to take possession of the digital assets of the deceased.
The sentence gives the wife the keys to access her husband's virtual life, also fueling the debate on digital inheritance in Italy, and on his coexistence with the right to privacy, which has been going on in the world for some years now.
More than ten years ago, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor of the relatives of a deceased person who had asked in vain to access his mailbox in search of any testamentary communications.
Great resonance also had the case that in Germany saw Facebook pitted against two parents, intent on shedding light on the death under a subway train of their fifteen-year-old daughter.
The affair ended after three degrees of judgment, when the Supreme Court ruled that the content of the Facebook account is of a personal nature, but there is no reason to exclude the transfer to the heirs.
The reluctance of the big Big Techs of the network to provide access to the data of the deceased in their possession has led to a series of disputes also in Italy.
The first sentence dates back to the beginning of 2021, when the Civil Court of Milan ordered Apple to provide the parents of a boy who died in a car accident with the recovery of the digital contents of his mobile phone from his accounts.
A similar decision was taken last November by the court of Bologna, which ordered Apple to access the personal data contained in the smartphone of the deceased son.
Even the latest provision of the Court of Milan, the one in favor of the widow, "remembers how the data contained in our accounts can become part of the inheritance, like the letters or photographs jealously guarded in the drawers of our desks", explains Marco Meliti, marriage lawyer and defender of the woman, who however finds a problem, namely the fact that "once the access keys have been obtained, everything stored in the account is indiscriminately possessed".
Including the secrets, if any, that each of us may want to take to the grave.
A veritable virtual chaos that risks overwhelming even fundamental rights.
