The reasons for the resignation of the Secretary General of Privacy Guarantor, Angelo Fanizza, have not been officially disclosed, but relate to Fanizza’s request to the IT security manager, Cosimo Comella, to obtain a lot of information from the computers of Guarantor employees (around 200 people). Fanizza made this request via email two days after it went live Rai 3 the first of three investigations by Report which highlights the potential conflict of interest of the Guarantor due to its close relationship with the government. Comella however rejected the request, and with an overwhelming response.
In a Nov. 4 email, Fanizza asked Comella to put a lot of employees’ personal information “on one or more DVDs”: emails, access to shared folders, document systems and security systems. At the end of the email, Fanizza explained that his request was “confidential and interpersonal” between him and Comella.
Screenshot of a copy of the email Angelo Fanizza sent to Cosimo Comella on November 4, 2025
Comella’s response came the next day, November 5, while she was on holiday in Australia. This was a somewhat surreal response, as Comella provided a detailed explanation of why Fanizza’s request was illegal. Not only, wrote Comella, recovering all such data “would constitute a paradoxical violation (…) of the regulations issued by the Guarantor itself”, but “in the absence of a request from the judicial authorities” it would also be “a violation of the constitutional right to freedom and confidentiality of correspondence”. This, continued Comella, apart from being proven to be a violation, will also cause the Guarantor to suffer enormous reputational damage.
One of the various passages in which Comella reminds Fanizza of the illicit aspects of her request in a response email dated November 5, 2025
Finally, Comella also wrote that recovering such a large amount of data was impossible both from a technical point of view (“it would require 20,000 DVD-R optical media”), also because some of the data dated back to March 2001, and because the time required was so long, calculated as “about 4,000 man-hours, equivalent to about one and a half years of dedicated technician time”.
Fanizza’s request was actually very strange: it was very clear that he was asking to do something potentially illegal, and he was doing it on registered, registered paper, sending everything through the institution’s official email address.
Fanizza is a judge and has only served as Guarantor since October, chosen by president Pasquale Stanzione. Comella is not only the manager of Guarantor, where he has worked since 2000: he is also married to Laura Mattarella, daughter of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. The board of directors of Guarantor distanced itself from Fanizza’s initiative, but it is still very strange that Fanizza made such a request in complete autonomy, considering all the circumstances: it was also for this reason that the assembly of employees of Guarantor asked for the resignation of the entire board of directors.
– Read also: The Secretary General of the Privacy Guarantee has resigned
