FC: Italian reportedly commits suicide after child porn allegation

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

See also:

"FBI misled, deceived judges in online child porn investigations" 
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04528.html

---

From: lawfirm () andreamonti net
To: declan () well com
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 09:00:40 +0100
Subject: A young man suicided for being suspected to exchange child pornography

Hallo Declan,
a sad news that should make (certain) people think.
Hope you'll share this mail on the list.
Best.
Andrea Monti

----
Today the italian newspapers report the news of the suicide of a
young man living near Asti, in the north of Italy.
When the Carabinieri (one of the several italian law enforcement
body) knocked at his door, he "dive" out the window, smashing on the
ground after a five-floor jump.
He was suspected to be part of a online exchange of child
pornography. Not to be a slaughter or a monster, just, maybe, a
lurker.
This the "cold" news. Now a short commentary.
The "child pornography" issue became a major topic for lawmakers and
politicians when most of them "discovered" the internet. So a true
crusade full of hypocrisy has been started against the "illegal
content" and in favour of the "moralisation" of the net especially by
the most conservative parts of right wing politicians and roman
catholic priests. That (the latter) even started a sort of "online
vigilantism", hiring "hackers"(???) to shut down "immoral" websites
(please remark that in Italy these kind of things are forbidden by
criminal law, but no criminal investigation has been started).
The result is a poorly conceived law that - instead of allowing to
hunt down the true monstes - has been enforced only againt people
that, even occasionally, just downloaded a few images (often not
pornographic,  and not apparently realised through the enslaving of
an under legal age person, as instead required by law).
The result is a substantial breach in the civil right and free speech
protection. That are threatened and damaged thanks to the use of
child-pornography as trojan.
Only a few voices rose up against this status quo (for a summary in
english see "Another "witchhunt" in Italy"
http://gandalf.it/netmark/netmar49.htm#heading03 wrote by Giancarlo
Livraghi, founder and former chairman, while more stuff in italian
has been published on ALCEI website (http://www.alcei.org).
What is worse, is that the memory of the death of this young man will
disappear in a few days.




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------