Press freedom in Italy is already restricted, but what is about to happen could go beyond the limit: a real and heavy censorship of all the information, from professional journalism to the blogs’ universe.

Magistracy will have no chance in the future to fight illegality and scandals like the recent medical and financial ones.

Berlusconi says his aim is to safeguard Privacy but the real risk is to obtain just a dangerous regime.

Yesterday, after a long debate between majority and opposition, the Italian Senate approved a bill re-forming the current regualation about interceptions.
The amendment reforms the article number 266 of the Civil Code, establishing what public prosecutors and judges can do, how long an interception can last and the listening rules.

By now, the law reform establishes that wiretaps are fundamental for the continuation of investigations and can be done on condition that the Court of the Region Capital upholds the request and that subsists the circumstancial evidence of a crime. For weighty crimes (for example, the involvement in criminal organizations such as Mafia of the person under investigation), a 'reasonable suspicion' of crime is enough to enable the legal authorization for the listening.

The Government's legislative decree, bearing the signature of the Justice Ministry Angelino Alfano (Berlusconi's party), must be approved by the Senate, the Parliament and, at the end, by the President of the Republic.

If the decree will be law, public prosecuters can start the interceptions not only "on the base of serious suspicions", but "on the base of specific investigation acts" that prove the liability of the person under investigation or of third parties.

The amendment has been criticized by the all the most important italian magistrates, because of its reference to article 192 of the Civil Code, concerning the examination of the evidence: this will imply, for the public prosecutors, the statutary compliance of obtaining support against the person inquired even before requesting the interception, which should, instead, be the source of the conclusive evidence.

Moreover, the decree prohibits:
- the lecture of telephone attendance notes, in the absence of a pre-existing evidence of guilt,
-the use of bugs, unless the public prosecutor is absolutely sure that a crime is going to be committed in a certain place.

The legislative decree has been told to be created to protect citizens' privacy rights, but the opposition parties (PD and IDV) assert that the restraints on interceptions provided in the amendment can make even more difficult the search for Mafia fugitives.

With regards to this argument, Donatella Ferranti (PD party) claimed the majority to distance itself from the italian undersecretary Daniela Santanché statements on air on the italian television: she told that recording telephone conversations between criminals and their families is a privacy violation.

The editors Giuseppe Laterza and Stefano Mauri, on the occasion of the Turin's International Book Fair, made a plea against the Government's legislative decree.

The appeal, signed by many Italian editors, has been critized by the the editorial manager of Einaudi, Ernesto Franco, who said: "This signature collection is only marketing. It's useless for the press freedom".
The different point of views have engendered what has already been defined as ''the editors' war".

The protest against the bill is spreading through social networks.
Stefano Rodotà (an italian political and jurist) created the Facebook group “Freedom is partecipation and information” that, by now, counts about 36.600 members.
In Rodotà's opinion, the reform of the interception law would demolish the basis of the constitutional system.
"Freedom of expression and citizens' information rights are put in jeopardy. A heavy censorship could affect the Information. Also the one, not professional, spread through the blogs (article 28).
[...] They said they want to protect citizens' Privacy: a rightful aim, that can be reached without violations of principles and rights.
The truth is that they want to impose a system made of opaqueness and secrecy. Constitutional freedom is not avaiable for the majority" (the text of the plea).