If you're not glad you're an American, you will be after reading this income-tax-related story from Italy that was all over the news this week:
How do you say privacy in Italian?
We find ourselves asking that question after reading reports that say Italian officials posted the income of every taxpayer on the Internet as part of efforts to increase transparency.
"The tax authority's website was inundated by people curious to know how much their neighbors, celebrities or sports stars were making," BBC News reports. "The Italian treasury suspended the website after a formal complaint from the country's privacy watchdog."
Members of the outgoing government expressed shock that people were upset by the surprise disclosure of individual income data from 2005.
"This is a matter of transparency, of democracy,'' outgoing Deputy Finance Minister Vincenzo Visco tells Bloomberg News. "I don't see any problem. The whole world does this. Just watch any American TV show and you'll see." (We have no idea what he's talking about. Do you?)
By the way, a quick search suggests that the Italian word for privacy is privacy or segretezza.
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