LETTER FROM ROME:Italy's new wiretap legislation could prove to be a gift for organised crime
ROME’S SPLENDID Piazza Navona is usually the most elegant of Eternal City spots, distinguished by its chic (and fiendishly expensive) cafes and by Bernini’s huge Fontana Dei Fiumi in the centre.
Partly because of its long and narrow sports track shape, the piazza also tends to be a theatrical sort of place, and is understandably a favourite haunt of tourists.
Last Thursday, however, the bemused tourists found themselves marginalised as the square became the major platform for a nationwide protest against the Berlusconi government’s intended wiretap (otherwise known as the “Gag Law”) legislation currently going through parliament.
Despite the initial heat – it was 33-35 degrees at the start of the evening – thousands crammed into the square to express their opposition to a measure that has sparked vehement protests from magistrates, journalists, industrialists, intellectuals, opposition forces, thousands of web bloggers and even the Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Critics claim the legislation will favour organised crime and muzzle the media.
Essentially, the Bill is intended to regulate the use of wiretaps and, in theory, protect citizens’ right to privacy. It would make it harder for police to obtain authorisation for wiretaps, would restrict their duration, and impose stiff fines on newspaper publishers and journalists who publish wiretap transcripts before investigations reach the trial stage, a process which in Italy can take years.
Critics argue that such legislation is clearly designed to protect the Berlusconi government from the sort of embarrassing revelations which last summer saw the prime minister caught up in a “sex-party” scandal.
They also warn it could prove to be a gift for organised crime: Palermo-based Mafia investigator Antonio Ingroia last month said that if the proposed legislation had been in place for the last 20 years, two of the most notorious Mafia godfathers, Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, would never have been captured.
OSCE representative for freedom of the media, Dunja Mijatovic, said last month the Bill represented a “trend towards criminalising journalistic work”, and that it contradicted fundamental OSCE commitments in relation to “meaningful investigative journalism in the service of democracy”.
In Piazza Navona last week, Nobel Literature laureate Dario Fo and acclaimed anti-Mafia writer Roberto Saviano were just two of many authoritative voices who expressed opposition to the Bill, with Saviano receiving the loudest applause when he said: “Privacy is sacrosanct, but this law does not defend it at all.
“We need to say it clearly to everyone: this law has only one objective, namely to make sure that we cannot report on how power is handled. This is about the privacy of business affairs, indeed of criminal business affairs.”
Article 616-bis in the Bill has been called the “D’Addario” clause in reference to Patrizia D’Addario, the call-girl who last summer claimed she spent the night with Berlusconi in his infamous “Putin” bed at his Rome residence of Palazzo Grazioli in November 2008.
To back up her story she produced mobile phone pictures taken inside Palazzo Grazioli, as well as recorded bedside and phone conversations purportedly with the prime minister.
(Having listened to these recordings recently, one has to conclude that the male voice in question sounds very like Berlusconi’s.)
D’Addario claimed (and still claims) that she went public not for any political motive, but because the prime minister had broken a promise to help her with a blocked construction project.
Its subsequent failure prompted her father to commit suicide.
D’Addario, it seems, had long been in the habit of recording her own conversations, on the phone or elsewhere, as a matter of self-defence.
She has a young daughter, and was involved in a relationship with a violent man who forced her to prostitute herself, and she made recordings of his violent behaviour and used them as evidence in a court case that resulted in his imprisonment.
If the Bill becomes law, such secret recordings will become illegal, hence the reference to the D’Addario clause.
D'Addario, too, was in Piazza Navona last week, but her presence was not welcomed by everyone. Demonstration organisers accused her of using the occasion to promote herself and her recent book, Gradisca Presidente, an account of her alleged encounters with Berlusconi. This may well have been true, but she probably merits an important position in this particular battle for press and other freedoms.
"Everybody knew about these things [parties], but nobody said anything," commented Manifestoeditor Norma Rangeri last week.
“She is a very courageous woman. It’s certainly not easy to take on the most powerful man in Italy.”
In the meantime, the battle against the “Gag Law” goes on. On Thursday there will be a press blackout by way of protest, and protesters intend to gather around parliament later this month when the Bill reappears, perhaps for the last time, in front of the house.
In the meantime, Piazza Navona has been reconsigned to the hot and thirsty tourists.