Hammer and Tongues

Silvio Berlusconi and his gang are planning to introduce a new law which will significantly limit investigators’ powers to wiretap conversations and use them in bringing criminals to trial The proposed law will also try to get journalists who publish wiretapped conversations  into prison. Journalists and criminal investigators, not to mention the general public, are not unreasonably worried about this development. The new law would exclude mafia association and other forms of organised crime but would let sex offenders, fraudsters, smugglers, forgerers, moneylauderers and many others slip through the net.

Former Minister of “Justice”, Clemente Mastella (the one whose lack of support for Prodi’s government lead to Berluscone IV) has reportedly said  (l’Unità 11 June 2008) “I think that investigators who rely solely on wiretaps are rather lazy  and inefficient”. 

Presumably all they have to do is go back to traditional investigative methods – perhaps the good old magnifying glass. – or, as hercule Poirot would have it, “the little grey cells”. A bit like saying that doctors should forget laser surgery and go back to the saw!