The Autistici/Inventati collective and the Investici Association, which represents the collective in legal and bureaucratic matters, are a group of people who mantain and develop electronic communication services for individuals, associations, informal groups and movements and, among their particular aims, defend the freedom of expression and privacy..
The story we are going to tell started in Avezzano, Italy, between
the 9th December 2008 and the 30th March 2009. A lawsuit gave rise to an
investigation where it is mantained that Gianluca Jannone, leader of
the neo-fascist group “Casa Pound”, and Ercole Marchionni, founder of
“casa pound Avezzano”, suffered threats and slander. In particular,
there are charges concerning a message painted on a wall, some red paint
on a door bell and some texts published on abruzzo.indymedia.org and
orsa.noblogs.org, claiming that no public space should be given to
declared neo-fascist groups.
After this lawsuit, public prosecutor Stefano Gallo activated together
with the Avezzano police office, and the case reached the postal police
in Milan. In August 2009 the Investici Association (and therefore the
Autistici/Inventati collective) was called to witness, and formally
declared in front of police agents that no log files linked with the
orsa @ canaglie . net mailbox were kept in its servers, nor did the
association have any personal data regarding the subscriber of the
mailbox.
The Avezzano police office sent a rogatory letter (with charges of
threats!!!) to Norway, Holland and Switzerland, asking the local
authorities to contact the providers where Autistici/Inventati keeps its
servers and obtain the data that our legal representative had not given
them – not with reticence, but because that information is clearly
unavailable.
In November 2010 the Norwegian postal police performed their duty
towards their Italian colleagues: they turned up at our provider’s
webfarm and asked to copy all the disks in the server, whose contents
are mostly encrypted.
About two hours after the seizure, we re-activated the services in
different servers. After approximately 24 hours, our whole
infrastructure was running exactly as before. In this case the R* Plan
worked nicely as an anti-censorship system.
Some considerations
We think that what happened can be read at several levels, reflecting different facets of the Italian society.
First of all, the relationships between Neo-Fascism and institutions. Recently the process related to the Piazza della Loggia bombing
ended with a series of acquittals. In two different phases of the
Italian history, Neo-Fascism and some state organizations where closely
connected. Historically, several elements link the Piazza della Loggia
bombing with neo-fascist groups, and in this case there have been clear
cover-ups, attempts to pigeon-hole the case, and silences which have
obscured many details until today. Thirty years after that attack, it is
impossible to obtain some kind of truth about what happened. The
protection mechanism that was started in the 70s worked perfectly well.
This kind of attitude is endemic, and can be found in more recent incidents that may be minor but are nonetheless painful.
The men who confessed to have killed the antifascist activist Dax have
been sentenced to ridiculous punishments, if compared for instance to
the four-year imprisonment sentence given to four Milanese anti-fascists
who had “robbed” a nazi-skin by taking his jacket.
These days, when all over Italy the police is complaining about reduced
funds, we find it unexplainable that a private lawsuit filed at the
Avezzano police office regarding minor events can unleash an
international rogatory frenzy aimed at acquiring data that are
inexistent and would be irrelevant to any investigation.
We can explain this only if we assume that “Casa Pound” has a certain influence in some sectors of the Italian police.
Since we were asked to witness and bound to answer, we have clearly
declared that we did not have the requested information. The subsequent
seizure means that they did not believe us.
We don’t understand what legal motivation can justify a damage to 2,000
people’s privacy just to obtain an evidence that the data regarding one
unknown individual do not exist. This investigation regards a single
mailbox, and what was requested in November 2010 was some logs dating
back to late 2008, which we did not have even back then.
Some answers can be perhaps found in the text of the rogatory letter,
and a passage from that brilliant English translation must be quoted:
“to obtain the file of log, and IP-access, for consultation, registration, change of password and updating relative to the mailbox ORSA @ CANAGLIE . NET (SHE-BEAR @ SCOUNDREL . NET) in the time span 2008–12-09 to 2009–12-09.”
The Public prosecutor’s office ordered the seizure, but did not
realize that translating a user name and a mail domain is as ridiculous
as it is useless. To be honest, we don’t think that this office is able
to produce any technical assessments regarding an IT case.
To sum up: this action appears as a small political intimidatory
retaliation against Autistici/Inventati, who have been considered
reticent in denying a piece of information we have never had and never
will have in the future.
But this small retaliation implies a major privacy problem for the 2,000
users who had a space in that server. Likewise, the facts that gave
rise to this investigation have been seemingly overrated. Starting from
an irrelevant political skirmish, overstated charges were used to send
three rogatory letters abroad.
Along this line, any argument among neighbors could be turned into an international plot.
This makes no sense, but in the end, nothing makes much sense in this whole story.
Updates on https://cavallette.autistici.org/