Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was tonight facing a showdown with the US justice department over planned Italian legislation that would curb the freedom of investigators to bug telephone conversations.
Critics say the law is designed to shield Berlusconi's government from further embarrassing revelations of the kind that have repeatedly discomfited the prime minister. He says that it is designed to protect ordinary citizens who, because of the routine leaking of court documents, sometimes find intimate details of their private life splashed across the press.
Earlier this week, the proposed law was nodded through committee in the Italian senate and is due to go before the full upper house of parliament next week. The measure was revived against the background of a mounting corruption scandal which this month forced the resignation of the industry minister, Claudio Scajola...
Guardian.co.uk
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