Digital Seizure Decree, magistrates worry about investigations

Evident organisational criticalities, serious impairment of investigations for serious crimes, organised crime investigations devastated. The outcome of the hearings of the representatives of the magistrature in the House Judiciary Committee on the reform, already approved in the Senate, of the procedures for seizing smartphones, computers, tablets, and in general any computer support is merciless.

For the president of the Anm, Cesare Parodi, the incoming intervention, if not revised in a deeply critical manner, will cause a severe burden on the organisational level of the relations between prosecutors' offices and the magistrate's offices. In the crosshairs the double authorisation wanted by the Ministry of Justice and the majority, first to proceed with the seizure of the device and then for the acquisition and use of the data.

Not only that. In terms of the incisiveness of investigations, for what Parodi wanted to consider merely an oversight, 'there is a serious oversight in the text of the bill, because it does not mention even computer interceptions: the rule concerns a very high number of crimes committed on the web. To deprive the possibility of using this type of communication, such as those between parties, would mean completely emptying an area of defence of computer crime where all these elements would inevitably be lost'.

A very high number of offences committed on the web would risk going unpunished: 'removing the possibility of using evidence of communications for which we will not have texts - warns Parodi - means abdicating the possibility of protection for a very large sector of criminal law: it would be an extremely negative message'. Then, for the president of the Anm, coordination should be established with the discipline on the acquisition of printouts to try to have an organic framework of reference for all citizens.

Anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Melillo cannot help but emphasise that "the bill already approved by the Senate is a concern that also concerns the fate of investigations into mafia crime, because some of the solutions prefigured in the text are truly alarming. There is a real danger of a setback in the fight against mafia crime,' but also on the front of cybercrime related to national security. 'It is up to Parliament to say whether the sacrifice of this trial,' Melillo noted, 'is a justified sacrifice. I believe I have a duty to say that it is an objectively unreasonable sacrifice'.