7 August 2006

Modifications to the law on telephone tapping

On Friday, the Council of Ministers accepted some of the modifications to the telephone tapping law that I requested.
The points I made were basically associated with the maintenance of the investigative potential of telephone tapping and the elimination of custodial sentences for journalists and for publishers.
On this latter point it’s necessary anyway to have absolute clarity before the law is ratified.
In fact, it must be explicit in the text that sets out from one to three years for “anyone who illicitly takes direct vision of the acts of preliminary investigations that are secret” that cannot in any way relate to journalists and publishers.
The most obvious limits to the activities of magistrates and journalists have been removed. A punitive climate in relation to these two categories would anyway be unacceptable. Information and Justice must not be hampered.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Justice