Sunday, October 15, 2006

Italians Sweat over "Snooping" on Drugs and Loose Talk

The ANNOTICO Report

 

When a satirical television show conducted surreptitious in person drug tests on Italian MPs last week, they embarrassed parliament and thrust Italys privacy laws into the spotlight.

 

Telephone intercepts, an essential tool for police and a source of many press stories, also came in for scrutiny.

 

Italians love to talk and the country has the highest level of mobile phone ownership in Europe.

 

But indiscreet chat kept newspaper readers entertained this summer, as evidence of football match-fixing and the exchange of sexual favours for jobs at state broadcaster RAI emerged.

Juventus director general Luciano Moggi was betrayed by his candour in some 100,000 calls made over eight months on his four phones. [RAA: Eight months is 240 days divided into 100,000 = 4,000 calls per day  divided by 16 hours = 250 calls per hour = 4 calls per minute= a call every 15 seconds NON STOP. Do you think there is a typo there????]

Prince Victor Emmanuel of Savoy was also undone by his calls.

 

Whereas, Bernardo Provenzano, the recently arrested Mafia boss, knew the score. He shunned modern technology, preferring to write coded messages on scraps of paper known as pizzini. The FBI is still trying to break his code.

 

ITALIANS SWEAT OVER DRUGS AND LOOSE TALK

 

Sunday Herald 

Glasgow, Scotland, UK 

From Philip Willani

In Rome  

 October 15, 2006 

WHEN journalists from a satirical television show conducted surreptitious drug tests on Italian MPs last week, they embarrassed parliament and thrust Italys privacy laws into the spotlight. The results appeared to show that one in three parliamentarians had used recreational drugs during the previous 36 hours: of 50 MPs tested, 12 showed positive for cannabis and four for cocaine.

The politicians had been duped into parting with a sample of sweat from their brow by a journalist posing as a make-up artist, while his colleague pretended to canvas their opinions on the forthcoming budget. The controversy was heightened when the independent Privacy Commission banned transmission of the report, which had been due to air on a television channel owned by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

It wasnt so much the violation of the MPs privacy the commission objected to  the swabs had been put together in one container, making it impossible to identify individuals  as the underhand and illegal method used to gather the samples, said one member. If the show had been allowed, it would have set a precedent for other illegal tests, such as secret health tests on job applicants.

It was hard not to conclude that the MPs rights had been given special treatment, though, when the programme went ahead with a report on drug use among club-goers. Tests were conducted on urine samples taken from the mens toilet of a disco: the dancers outdid the MPs drug use but there seemed much less concern for their privacy rights.

The case caused cross-party confusion and much mirth, with the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini, the right-wing MP Alessandra, claiming the Privacy Commissions intervention threatened fundamental democratic freedoms, while a leading lawmaker called for compulsory drug tests on all his colleagues.

With the TV journalists thwarted over the MPs, things went better last week for one of their print colleagues. A judge in the northern town of Brescia ordered prosecutors to return a computer to a journalist from the Rome newspaper La Repubblica, saying its seizure violated his rights as a citizen and a journalist.

The prosecutors had confiscated Carlo Boninis computer and cloned its hard disk after he used it to send a report on the alleged CIA kidnap of an Egyptian cleric in Milan to a journalist colleague. The judge ruled their action was unacceptably intrusive and exploratory, as they appeared to be fishing for evidence of a crime. It was an assault on press freedom and a violation of a citizens right to confidential correspondence, he said.

Signals have been more mixed over telephone intercepts, an essential tool for police and a source of many press stories. Italians love to talk and the country has the highest level of mobile phone ownership in Europe. But indiscreet chat kept newspaper readers entertained this summer, as evidence of football match-fixing and the exchange of sexual favours for jobs at state broadcaster RAI emerged.

Juventus director general Luciano Moggi was betrayed by his candour in some 100,000 calls made over eight months on his four phones.

Prince Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, the pretender to the abolished Italian throne, was also undone by his calls. Despite telling a friend that his mobile phone was the most-tapped in Italy he kept on talking. He was not only arrested for alleged corruption and procuring prostitutes but humiliated by publication of his scurrilous comments on everything from women to the French.

Highlights of some of those frank conversations have been published in Hello, Whos Spying? The Black Book Of Telephone Intercepts. But the book may be the last, as the government has passed a law requiring the destruction of illegally obtained intercepts and threatening to fine newspapers up to 1 million for unauthorised publication of private calls.

Bernardo Provenzano, the recently arrested Mafia boss, knew the score. He shunned modern technology, preferring to write coded messages on scraps of paper known as pizzini. The FBI is still trying to break his code, believed to be based on his well-used copy of the Bible.

 

 

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