How Did Wiretapping Become a Money-Generating Tool for Corrupted Judicial Officials in Italy?

The Italian police accidentally caught a lawyer who told a mafia boss that she was able to know if his phone was under surveillance, while the police were already eavesdropping on her, which sparked controversy in Italy, where wiretapping operations target about 110,000 gangsters, drug dealers and employees who are suspected of corruption.

The lawyer Camilla Marianera said: “I know a person at the court in the office where they unwind the tapes, and he does me lots of favors.”

The Times report, published on Sunday, February 26, 2023, revealed that: “By some calculations Italians are the most wiretapped people in the world,” under the pretext of combating and thwarting organized gang crimes.

Yet, many mafias and mafia leaders are now able to know if they are under surveillance, thanks to the presence of people who are able to access secret phone wiretapping lists.

 

Questioning the Feasibility of Wiretapping

A special unit of the Italian police had succeeded in entrapping the trainee lawyer, Camilla Marianera, who is 28 years old, after she told a mafia boss that she was able to confirm if someone was eavesdropping on him, in return for paying 300 euros to an employee in the judiciary who has access to secret phone wiretapping software.

The disclosure of this incident sparked controversy about the feasibility of wiretapping, especially as it costs the state budget 200 million euros annually to wiretap the phones of about 110,000 gangsters, drug dealers, and employees who are suspected of administrative corruption.

Some studies say that Italy is witnessing the largest wiretapping operations in the world, while judges assert that this is the only way they can penetrate the mafia gangs and find out the corrupt deals concluded by senior officials and employees in the country.

The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, had promised during her election program to reduce the number of people targeted by wiretapping, but still some politicians who hear strange clicking sounds while talking on the phone, say, mixing humor with seriousness: “Good morning (evening), Officer,” assuming their calls are being listened to.

The Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, had presented a plan to reduce the wiretapping operations, complaining that the annual cost was too high, while Roberto Scarpinato, a former judge, confirmed that the cost of wiretapping, which may sometimes not exceed 250 euros per day, can be compensated by large quantities of the huge money that is being confiscated from mafias or corruption deals.

He continued, “When I was chief magistrate in Palermo I seized €3.5 billion in assets from the mafia in four years, while in the whole of Italy, €12 billion in mob assets is seized every five years thanks to wiretaps.”

Scarpinato sees wiretaps as necessary to catch white-collar fraudsters, including corrupt politicians. He continued, “The problem here is the politicians in Italy who fear that wiretapping will lead to the discovery of their own misdeeds.”

 

Spying on Phones

In January 2022, Reuters reported that an Italian company has been able to develop a program to spy on phones, which can penetrate the system of Apple and Android phones.

Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, said that hacking tools from an Italian company have been used to spy on Apple and Android phones in Italy and Kazakhstan.

According to a report by the company, a laboratory specializing in communications services in Milan, which claims on its website that European law enforcement agencies are among its clients, has developed tools to spy on the messages and communications of the targeted devices.

The report comes at a time when European and US telecoms regulators are considering the possibility of imposing new rules on the sale and import of spyware.

Google said that these people allow the spread of dangerous hacking tools and arm them with governments that are unable to develop these capabilities locally.

Neither Apple nor the governments of Italy and Kazakhstan responded to a Reuters request for comment.

The lab emphasized that its products and services comply with European standards and help law enforcement agencies investigate crimes, while Google said it had taken steps to protect Android users and warned them about the spyware.

 

Political Weapon

In April 2021, Italian journalists and lawmakers protested after a report revealed that investigators had wiretapped journalists’ phone calls.

The Italian newspaper Domani reported that among the conversations intercepted by investigators a few years ago were the calls between journalists and those engaged in rescuing migrants who were unaware their phones had been bugged, like the Radio Radicale reporter Sergio Scandurra.

The investigation dates back to a few years ago when former Italian government officials were cracking down on humanitarian ships rescuing migrants in the central Mediterranean.

The Italian Federation of Journalists condemned the wiretapping and demanded to know who issued the orders.

The union added that if the purpose of the wiretapping were to reveal the sources of the correspondents, then the professional rights of journalists would have been violated.

Domani newspaper reported that hundreds of pages of transcripts of phone conversations are part of an investigation into the activities of humanitarian rescue groups, which is being led by the Sicilian public prosecutor.

In December 2022, The Euractiv website revealed that the Italian government is looking to reform the use of wiretapping as the practice costs millions and is often used as a means to pressure political opponents, including via the press.

Italian Justice Minister Carlo Nordio presented measures to reform wiretapping practices before the Senate. These include a deep revision of wiretapping practices, as these are often used at the discretion of judges without just cause and as a political weapon.

“We will propose a profound revision” of the discipline of wiretapping in investigations and trials, and “we will strictly monitor any dissemination that is arbitrary and improper,” the minister said. ~