If Minister Nordio pretends not to know that Mafia crimes are discovered by investigating other things

“No mobster admits crimes over the phone.” In defending before the Senate the desire to limit wiretapping, the Minister of Justice Charles Nordio arrived at paradoxical and timeless statements. There are no cases in which anyone has admitted crimes over the telephone, mafia or not: even the last suspect for theft knows the reality of telephone surveillance, central to dozens of TV dramas. If he speaks, he does it in a suggestive way. However, this does not mean that interceptions have lost importance. Because bosses and their supporters need to communicate. Maybe they use online chats: for example Joseph Guttadauro, doctor and head of the district of Brancaccio, believed that Telegram was safe. Or they confront each other keeping their cell phones turned off or having a conversation only in places they deem inviolable.

However, there are different interception techniques, which have made and continue to make an enormous contribution to investigations. First of all, the bugs and micro-cameras, hidden by the investigators in the cars and in possible hideouts. Then the more modern and invasive tools, such as telematic Trojans which, once inserted into smartphones and computers, allow you to record, collect data and images even when the phones are disconnected. Without forgetting that any mobile phone leaves a trace – the so-called metadata – which allows movements and contacts to be reconstructed.

These investigation mechanisms rarely provide evidence against the bosses but allow you to put together the many pieces of a mosaic from which indictments and trials are born. It is from these investigative activities that – as the commander of the Ros declared – we have come to identify the pathology of Matthew Messina Money. Bugs and Trojans prove to be even more powerful when employed against entrepreneurs, professionals and public officials who contribute to the business and crimes of modern gangs: figures who often consider themselves unsuspecting and therefore use minor precautions but who have allowed mafiosi like the Trapani godfather to continue the trades even during the fugitive.

Cosa Nostra, Camorra and Ndrangheta are aware of the technological evolution of surveillance. Not surprisingly, they often have cars and houses cleaned up by specialists in bug hunting. And they are trying to equip themselves with even more sophisticated devices, such as encrypted smartphones which are at the center of all the most recent investigations conducted against drug trafficking families.

Minister Nordio seems unaware of all this. And he then tried to rectify his statements: “When it is said that mafiosi do not speak on the telephone, I am alluding to the fact that no mafioso has expressed a desire to commit a crime over the telephone or in any case uttered words that constitute proof of a crime in progress, in progress or a planned crime”. And this statement is perhaps even more surprising. Because mafia-type criminal associations are not simple gangs that come together to commit a crime, but have different characteristics: affiliates can be convicted of mafia even if they have never committed any other crime. This is the strong point of our legislation, which came into force in 1982 by the will of a great Keeper of Seals – Carlo Rognoni – who put the lesson of to good use Pio La TorrePCI parliamentarian assassinated by Cosa Nostra.