propaganda.lege.net/misperceptions/examples/rsf/italy
http://propaganda.lege.net/misperceptions/examples/rsf/italy/
Reporters Without Borders
Italy
Source: http://rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=7139
Or: http://rsf.fr/print.php3?id_article=7139
19.06.2003
After the 11 September attacks, government efforts to reform the country's intelligence services and fight cybercrime led to a substantial increase in monitoring of the Internet.
The government pushed through parliament at the end of 2001 a reform of the national intelligence services, which allowed the civil (SISDE) and military (SISMI) secret services, as well as the carabinieri and the regular police, to install phone and electronic taps simply with permission from the state prosecutor. The inherent secrecy of these special services hides the exact nature of the surveillance, but privacy and confidentiality protection organisations have strongly criticised the measure. Italy, which held the presidency of the informal G8 group of countries at the time of the 11 September attacks, also laid the first stone, in a government statement on 19 September 2001, of a policy of "fighting Internet and high tech crimes." This led to strengthening the powers, resources and activities of the G8 group. Experts at the June 2002 G8 meeting in Canada of eight heads of government said the G8 network of originally 16 (now 26) countries enables speedy cooperation between international police forces when urgent response is required to high tech crimes, including e-mail messages between terrorists and other criminals. The G8 meeting noted that legal experts and police had developed ways to detect the origin, destination and routing of terrorist and criminal messages on the Internet, ways to get electronic proof of it and to ensure retention of such evidence so that it was not deleted or altered.
Internet freedom organisations have especially protested about the controversial amendment of the European Directive on Protection of Telecommunications Data and Information (see section on the European institutions) approved on 30 May 2002 and authorising member-states to retain phone and Internet connection records (traffic logs).
LINKS :
* Association for Interactive Electronic Communication Freedom Electronic Frontier Italy (ALCEI-EFI): http://www.alcei.it/
Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world, as well as the right to inform the public and to be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Reporters Without borders has nine national sections (in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and Washington and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.
© Reporters Without Borders 2002
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)