Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is sending out a message as he and his allies fall victim to a string of embarrassing phone call leaks: Stop listening.
He is pressing a bill to limit the use of investigative wiretaps that have been the source of numerous scandals, but there is fierce opposition to curbing official eavesdropping in one of the world’s most wiretapped nations.
Magistrates warn the contentious legislation winding through parliament would damage their fight against the Mafia, terrorism and pedophilia by severely limiting powers to conduct wiretaps.
Journalists denounce provisions that would ban them from printing wiretap transcripts as a breach of freedom of information, and called a media blackout for yesterday to illustrate the impact.
Newspaper journalists went on strike on Thursday so papers couldn’t come out the next day.
Most observers agree a problem does exist in Italy: too many wiretaps, their contents too readily made public, often in violation of privacy and without a clear connection to any relevant probes.
Wiretaps and leaked phone conversations are an important source of fodder for Italian newspapers. Some of it is salacious, as when the purported recordings of a call girl who claimed to have slept with Berlusconi dominated headlines last year for weeks.
In waging his battle against wiretaps, the scandal-plagued Berlusconi, who has been the target of several corruption probes, has cast himself as an unlikely champion of democratic values.
“We are all spied on!” he said recently. “Do we realize that this is not a civilized country, that this is not real democracy? ... We can tolerate this no more!”
However, critics also say what Berlusconi really wants is to protect himself and his allies.
“The real objective of this bill is to prevent the reporting of judicial cases that have a high political impact, the ones that can generate, and have generated, embarrassment,” Roberto Natale, the president of the journalists union, said in an interview.
International organizations have added their voices to the critics, including Reporters Without Borders, which denounced the proposed the law as authoritarian.
Italy is arguably one of the most wiretapped nations on the planet, but the estimates of how many people are being spied on electronically vary. According Italian Justice Minister Angelino Alfano, who drafted the bill, there are more than 100,000 authorized taps each year. That compares with 20,000 people wiretapped a year in France, 5,500 in Britain and 1,700 in the US, Alfano said at the time the bill was presented.
In recent months, most wiretaps leaked to Italian newspapers have emerged from a scandal in which the Italian disaster relief agency is suspected of corruption in connection with contracts for last year’s G8 summit.
Leaked conversations include a former public works official apparently discussing gay prostitutes with a Vatican choir member and a Brazilian masseuse saying her services to the disaster agency chief went no further than giving a massage.
If the law passes, “Italian citizens would miss out on a lot of news,” Natale said.
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