The judge for the preliminary investigations and no longer the public prosecutor will decide on the seizure of the mobile phone, as will the acquisition of the contents, from which messages and communications deemed by the investigating judge to be not criminally relevant will be excluded.
The new reform on the acquisition of chats is now certain: it will most likely be discussed in Parliament by next April.
It is the minister Carlo Nordio himself who announces the measure, in the wake of the measures for wiretapping from which the final approval is expected in the Chamber.
"Today there are not only conversations in the cell phone, there is an entire life, so this cannot be put in the hands of a prosecutor who takes possession of it with a signature and perhaps later does not monitor its disclosure enough", explains the Keeper of the Seals referring to the upcoming changes on the "discipline of smartphone seizure".
Considerations that arrive in conjunction with the start of the process for this other future law, contained in the amendment filed in the Senate in these hours in the Justice Committee by the rapporteur Sergio Rastrelli (Fratelli d'Italia) to the Zanettin-Bongiorno bill.
The amendment, according to what we learn from political sources, was born from an exchange with the minister and Rastrelli himself defined it as "government-inspired".
To seize a smartphone, the prosecutor's decree will no longer be enough but the green light from the investigating judge will be needed (except in urgent cases), but chats, communications and email correspondence will also have to be examined by the judge, who will have to apply the same rules on wiretapping. (in articles 266 and 267 of the penal code) establishing the limits of admissibility.
Only criminally relevant conversations will therefore be selected and those that are not will end up in a secret archive of the Prosecutor's Office.
It is a provision that "follows what the Constitutional Court establishes", explains the satisfied deputy minister Sisto.
While sharing "the concern that sensitive and personal data unrelated to investigations could be disclosed", the National Magistrates Association points the finger at the fact that "to intervene in the matter the public prosecutor is indiscriminately portrayed as a shadowy figure, outside control, which takes possession of the data and does not monitor their disclosure. It is a continuous work of delegitimizing the figure of the prosecutor, who - thunders the vice-president of the ANM, Alessandra Maddalena - wants at all costs to be represented as extraneous to the culture of the jurisdiction The only effect will be to deprive it of the guarantees of autonomy and independence provided by the Constitution and to subject it to the influence of political power, to the detriment of citizens".
And the Democratic Party raises an "alarm regarding the impact of the rule on particularly delicate investigations, starting with those relating to the mafia".
Regarding the crime of abuse of office, deleted from the bill in the final stages of becoming law, the Minister of Justice Nordio then reiterates his position: "From a technical-juridical point of view, the concept of 'spy crime' should not even exist. there is a crime or there isn't, it's called the principle of mandatoryity and specificity of the criminal law. To say that abuse of office is a symptom of corruption is in and of itself wrong."
And in these hours he has returned to the case of Ilaria Salis, the 39-year-old Milanese detained in Budapest, throwing water on the fire of the controversy that arose with her father, Roberto, who contested the minister's declarations on the management of the case ("unfortunately they lost a year", Nordio said, referring to the fact that house arrest had not been requested immediately in Hungary).
"Far be it from me to comment on the people involved in the affair because when you are oppressed by the pain of such a dramatic situation every expression is understandable", but - underlined the owner of Via Arenula - "mine is a purely legal criticism", a question of correct procedure, which "they are now following because they have accepted our advice".
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