10|06|15 - The Italian news agency, ANSA, reports that the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) urged Italy today to drop or amend a contested bill aimed at restricting the use of wiretaps and their publication before trials. Read ANSA story. The OSCE called on the Italian government to withdraw the current measure and modify it to bring it into line with international standards guaranteeing freedom of the press. The legislation in its current form apparently provides among other objectionable provisions, the possibility of a prison sentence for anyone who is not a "professional journalist" who records or films a person without their prior approval. From across the Atlantic, the Berlusconi government's recent actions are being watched anxiously. Italians abroad who value freedom of the press as an indispensable ingredient of a healthy democracy are wondering quo vadis Italia? Berlusconi has been undeterred in defense of the proposed wiretap law: "Ours is not real a real democracy ... We are all being spied on and this is intolerable," he said.

PS: To be fair, in one of the most liberal states in America,the State of Maryland to be prescise, a young man who took a video of a traffic stop, is facing p to 16 years in prison because he recorded the police officer without his consent! These are the perils of wiretapping laws!

|CiaoAmerica.net|