Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[LondonJohn]

Very interesting, how do you feel about this? A family says some angry words about their son and brother being arrested on a ludicrous charge, try to do something to help them, and find themselves also under fire--and wiretapped! Doesn't the latter bother you a little bit? They wiretapped the father of a kid arrested on a preposterous charge? Why would they do that? Do you suppose this is common practice in Italy?

Regarding wiretaps: over the past couple of decades, Italy seems to have gone through a crazy epidemic of tapping phones for the flimsiest of reasons. In the UK, I believe it's correct to say that police need prima facie evidence that a crime is being committed or planned, and a senior officer (Deputy Chief Constable or higher) or a judge needs to agree with the evidence and sign the wire tap order. In addition, there are very strong limitations on whether the taps themselves can ever be used in evidence: they are almost always used as a tool, to lead police towards evidence than can later be presented in court.

By contrast, Italy seems to have a remarkably lax set of rules around wiretapping. It may be that Italy is trying to become more rigorous in its use of wiretaps: perhaps this is one of the things that has led some commentators to describe Italy as a quasi-Police-State.

Research carried out in 2004 indicated that Italy had the highest rate of wiretaps per 100,000 inhabitants in the entire world. Italy's rate was 76 per 100,000, compared with 3.3 for the UK and 0.5 for the USA. You do the math(s)...

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number2.14/wiretap

 

[quadraginta]

Oh, sorry, I just assumed you were trying to argue something actually related to the topic of this thread. Not that you were concerned that someone was wrong on the internet about a tiny inconsequential detail. It seems I was mistaken. My apologies.

Now perhaps you'd like to discuss the case of Knox/Sollecito?

Trite dismissal and evasion? That's all you've got? Stiudiously avoiding the relevant content of my comments?

Do you wonder why no one but sycophants takes this thread seriously?

You shouldn't.

This established pattern of waiting until enough time has passed to attempt to re-assert earlier failed claims such as Kevin has done is one of the reasons why these threads are viewed more as a source of entertainment by most members of this board than as any serious contemplation of issues.

A failed premise is failed. Quoting xkcd cartoons doesn't change or diminish that simple fact. If you wish to exercise yourself pushing goalposts around, especially ones which have long since been passed, then feel free. Just don't expect me to add my shoulder to the crowd. It's enough of a strain just watching all that effort.

You might want invest in that oil with Kevin and LJ. It seems like y'all are gonna need a lot.

 

[Matthew Best]

Stiudiously [sic] avoiding the relevant content of my comments?

I didn't notice any. What was it?

Do you wonder why no one but sycophants takes this thread seriously?

I can see you don't. Why do you waste your time?

 

[CoulsdonUK]

Very interesting, how do you feel about this? A family says some angry words about their son and brother being arrested on a ludicrous charge, try to do something to help them, and find themselves also under fire--and wiretapped! Doesn't the latter bother you a little bit? They wiretapped the father of a kid arrested on a preposterous charge? Why would they do that? Do you suppose this is common practice in Italy?

I think any family would do their upmost to help their son or brother. However, any help or assistance should be within the context of the law, if during the trial their attempts to help Raffaele are proven to have broken any laws then they should face the consequences of their actions. I don’t believe their sincere belief in Raffaele is innocent means they can do whatever it takes to get him released. It would appear that wiretapping or the degree of wiretapping in Meredith’s murder case is not unusual in Italy, I guess with its history of corruption, organised crime and fascism it’s not that surprising.

 

[pilot padron]

Very interesting, how do you feel about this? A family says some angry words about their son and brother being arrested on a ludicrous charge, try to do something to help them, and find themselves also under fire--and wiretapped! Doesn't the latter bother you a little bit? They wiretapped the father of a kid arrested on a preposterous charge? Why would they do that? Do you suppose this is common practice in Italy?

1) Why would they do that ??
Per chance because they have access to a myriad of details that you do not, and they do not share your personal unsupported descriptions of 'preposterous and ludicrous charges" so they used a perfectly legal wiretap

2)"Try to do something" that authorities charge is patently unethical as well as allegedly illegal ??

3) May I suggest you read the readily available transcripts of exactly what "angry words" they said and the totally unlawful actions they discussed to "try to help them" that even Dr Sollecito himself knew at the time were grounds for indictment and tried to silence his incredibly ignorant Carabinieri Officer Daughter from recounting

This would enable you to probably easily answer your own questions, and comprehend the fact that those actions you cite would be considered as 'common practice' nearly everywhere.
Contrary to your inference, this is not a spying on enemies wiretap by an ultra secret KGB-like Agency (on a 'kid').
Even the US FBI uses these techniques every hour of every day... to protect us all

Conclusion; this perfectly legal, commonly used wiretap does not bother me one iota, nor should it you.

Finally your subtle emphasis on the tired talking points: 'Baaaaad Italian Authorities', and 'the kid' gets you an noted "atta-boy" from peeps in the PR Palace in Downtown Seattle

ETA:
Having just noted LJ's startling numbers that show Italy's wiretaps are 152 times as frequent as in the US; without further research I grant little other than somewhere there is probably a cleverly crafted and cunningly presented statistic that on cursory shallow introspection seems able to 'prove' almost anything.
See several examples here:http://www.econoclass.com/misleadingstats.html

 

[quadraginta]

Regarding wiretaps: over the past couple of decades, Italy seems to have gone through a crazy epidemic of tapping phones for the flimsiest of reasons. In the UK, I believe it's correct to say that police need prima facie evidence that a crime is being committed or planned, and a senior officer (Deputy Chief Constable or higher) or a judge needs to agree with the evidence and sign the wire tap order. In addition, there are very strong limitations on whether the taps themselves can ever be used in evidence: they are almost always used as a tool, to lead police towards evidence than can later be presented in court.

By contrast, Italy seems to have a remarkably lax set of rules around wiretapping. It may be that Italy is trying to become more rigorous in its use of wiretaps: perhaps this is one of the things that has led some commentators to describe Italy as a quasi-Police-State.

Research carried out in 2004 indicated that Italy had the highest rate of wiretaps per 100,000 inhabitants in the entire world. Italy's rate was 76 per 100,000, compared with 3.3 for the UK and 0.5 for the USA. You do the math(s)...

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number2.14/wiretap

Interesting numbers. I don't necessarily doubt them, but I'd love to see the methodology behind the conclusions.

For example ...

The report entitled 'Rechtswirklichkeit und Effizienz der Überwachung der Telekommunikation' researches the legal and practical situation in Germany regarding police wiretapping. The report also investigates the situation in surrounding countries, notably in Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon countries.

It would be good, for example, to know exactly how "police" is defined. In the U.S. would this include the DHS, whose mandate includes the INS, Customs Enforcement, and Border Protection, among may other responsibilities? Does it include the FBI, or any of the fifty separate state organs which serve the same function within state borders? Does it include the CIA, whose mandate supposedly excludes surveillance of U.S. citizens within the country's borders, but often seems to be oddly elastic? Does it include the Secret Service? Or the BATF, or the IRS, or any of the other branches of Treasury? Etc., etc., etc.

Most of the local police here don't need to wiretap very often. By the time things reach the point where it is warranted there is frequently some other government agency involved with longer arms and bigger muscles.

The DHS doesn't even need to bother getting a search warrant ahead of time to wiretap anymore. They just have to gin up some excuse for having done it after the fact.

 

[quadraginta]

delete.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

Regarding wiretaps: over the past couple of decades, Italy seems to have gone through a crazy epidemic of tapping phones for the flimsiest of reasons. In the UK, I believe it's correct to say that police need prima facie evidence that a crime is being committed or planned, and a senior officer (Deputy Chief Constable or higher) or a judge needs to agree with the evidence and sign the wire tap order. In addition, there are very strong limitations on whether the taps themselves can ever be used in evidence: they are almost always used as a tool, to lead police towards evidence than can later be presented in court.

By contrast, Italy seems to have a remarkably lax set of rules around wiretapping. It may be that Italy is trying to become more rigorous in its use of wiretaps: perhaps this is one of the things that has led some commentators to describe Italy as a quasi-Police-State.

Research carried out in 2004 indicated that Italy had the highest rate of wiretaps per 100,000 inhabitants in the entire world. Italy's rate was 76 per 100,000, compared with 3.3 for the UK and 0.5 for the USA. You do the math(s)...

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number2.14/wiretap

Some UK councils (local government) are using surveillance laws designed for tracking potential terrorist to snoop on people misusing for example disabled parking bays. Did you also know that the UK has over 4 million close circuits TV more than any other European country?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/21/local-authorities-spy-on-public

 

[Matthew Best]

Did you also know that the UK has over 4 million close circuits TV more than any other European country?

They'll catch up with us eventually, poor benighted heathens.

 

[LondonJohn]

Interesting numbers. I don't necessarily doubt them, but I'd love to see the methodology behind the conclusions.

For example ...




It would be good, for example, to know exactly how "police" is defined. In the U.S. would this include the DHS, whose mandate includes the INS, Customs Enforcement, and Border Protection, among may other responsibilities? Does it include the FBI, or any of the fifty separate state organs which serve the same function within state borders? Does it include the CIA, whose mandate supposedly excludes surveillance of U.S. citizens within the country's borders, but often seems to be oddly elastic? Does it include the Secret Service? Or the BATF, or the IRS, or any of the other branches of Treasury? Etc., etc., etc.

Most of the local police here don't need to wiretap very often. By the time things reach the point where it is warranted there is frequently some other government agency involved with longer arms and bigger muscles.

The DHS doesn't even need to bother getting a search warrant ahead of time to wiretap anymore. They just have to gin up some excuse for having done it after the fact.

Well, to give you a half-answer, the only bodies in the UK which would ever seek wiretaps are the police (the vast majority of taps), intelligence services, local councils, the Department for Work & Pensions or HMRC (revenue and customs). In addition, all wiretap orders in the UK are lodged with the courts, and this can be pretty much the only place that the statistics were gathered from. So the UK total would encapsulate pretty much all of the authorised taps. And that'd be 3.3 per 100,000, compared with Italy's 76 per 100,000. Less than 5% of Italy's rate.

And of course that's not even counting the unauthorised wiretaps that appear to also take place in Italy:

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.18/italy

ETA: The UK actually has an "Interception of Communications Commissioner". He collates the data centrally, and publishes a yearly report on wiretaps etc. Here's his exciting website!

http://www.ipt-uk.com/default.asp?sectionID=8&chapter=2

 

[LondonJohn]

Some UK councils (local government) are using surveillance laws designed for tracking potential terrorist to snoop on people misusing for example disabled parking bays. Did you also know that the UK has over 4 million close circuits TV more than any other European country?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/21/local-authorities-spy-on-public

I do indeed know this. But CCTV in public spaces is arguably not intrusive at all, and there's a very good case to be made that the benefits far outweigh any potential attack on civil liberties.

Listening to private telephone conversations, however, is a whole different ball game.

 

[Chris C]

1) Why would they do that ??
Per chance because they have access to a myriad of details that you do not, and they do not share your personal unsupported descriptions of 'preposterous and ludicrous charges" so they used a perfectly legal wiretap

2)"Try to do something" that authorities charge is patently unethical as well as allegedly illegal ??

3) May I suggest you read the readily available transcripts of exactly what "angry words" they said and the totally unlawful actions they discussed to "try to help them" that even Dr Sollecito himself knew at the time were grounds for indictment and tried to silence his incredibly ignorant Carabinieri Officer Daughter from recounting

This would enable you to probably easily answer your own questions, and comprehend the fact that those actions you cite would be considered as 'common practice' nearly everywhere.
Contrary to your inference, this is not a spying on enemies wiretap by an ultra secret KGB-like Agency (on a 'kid').
Even the US FBI uses these techniques every hour of every day... to protect us all

Conclusion; this perfectly legal, commonly used wiretap does not bother me one iota, nor should it you.

Finally your subtle emphasis on the tired talking points: 'Baaaaad Italian Authorities', and 'the kid' gets you an noted "atta-boy" from peeps in the PR Palace in Downtown Seattle

ETA:
Having just noted LJ's startling numbers that show Italy's wiretaps are 152 times as frequent as in the US; without further research I grant little other than somewhere there is probably a cleverly crafted and cunningly presented statistic that on cursory shallow introspection seems able to 'prove' almost anything.
See several examples here:http://www.econoclass.com/misleadingstats.html

More hidden evidence. Seems to be a common gulter theme!
Hmm wasn't Knox's phone already wiretapped before her so called spontaneous statement. Do you think Filomena's or Laura's phones were tapped? This wiretapping also happened before they were ever charged with any crime or an official suspect. Yet its common practice in Italy to wiretap people if a thought crosses their mind that said person might have committed a crime. So I smell a hint of innuendo when you use that KGB remark that they must know for a fact that his father committed a crime when they wiretapped him, yet thats not always the case when it concerns Italy. As you can tell by the fact of when they wiretapped Knox.

 

[Mary_H]

(Aside: what person, when staging a break in, plants the rock in a paper bag???)

Love it, babycondor!

 

[CoulsdonUK]

I do indeed know this. But CCTV in public spaces is arguably not intrusive at all, and there's a very good case to be made that the benefits far outweigh any potential attack on civil liberties.

Listening to private telephone conversations, however, is a whole different ball game.

I doubt your figures include UK security services or GCHQ, I am fairly certain they don’t come up in any published figures and as such we have no idea of what the true figure is. With over 4 million CCTV’s that is roughly 1 for every 15 people in the UK, that’s pretty high.

 

[LondonJohn]

I doubt your figures include UK security services or GCHQ, I am fairly certain they don’t come up in any published figures and as such we have no idea of what the true figure is. With over 4 million CCTV’s that is roughly 1 for every 15 people in the UK, that’s pretty high.

Yup, MI5 and GCHQ are included in the figures, it appears:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1576937/Phones-tapped-at-the-rate-of-1000-a-day.html

And we're still WAAAAAAAAAY behind Italy.

 

[Mary_H]

I think it is interesting to note that the inception of this series of threads was an OP titled "Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel" and quite unabashedly made that simple claim in the body of the post.

An OP by a Knox advocate.

This premise was quite quickly and easily discounted by the ensuing posts, most of which were offered by people with no 'dog in the fight' at all, and the remainder largely unwilling to accept her innocence as a given.

I find this interesting because as that occurred the various Knox defenders involved backed away from this initial assertion, rather grudgingly distancing themselves from such a patently flawed claim, and now it seems to be popular among them to re-invent it as a mantra deriding those who fail in an unquestioning acceptance of her innocence for no other apparent reason than it sounds so silly. A fascinating case of inversion.

My, my. How times change.

Aren't you being overly literal, quadraginta? Skeptic Ginger developed a catchy phrase with which to start a new thread, and it was extremely successful at getting people's attention. I have always assumed she was writing figuratively about the cartwheel. She explained the reference at the end of her brief post: "The cartwheel BTW, for those of you not familiar with the case, was what Knox did in the police station when she was being questioned. That made the police think she was too casual and made her guilty."

Ginger managed to pique a lot of interest in the case without hitting people over the head with a ton of details. Think of the ridicule she would have garnered if she had also mentioned the swiveling hips, the crying and the eating of pizza, other behaviors of Amanda that Edgardo Giobbi freely admitted were what convinced him of Amanda's guilt. Everyone knows Amanda wasn't found guilty because of a cartwheel -- Ginger's point was that suspicions fell on Amanda because of certain behaviors, and those suspicion led to arrest, imprisonment, trial and conviction.

The people you say discounted Ginger's OP look to me like they had a dog in a fight against Ginger, not about the case. I was on another thread about the case with Ginger and posters came from miles around to disparage her. Apparently, she has enemies at JREF.

.

 

[Kaosium]

Except that they didn't ... as I pointed out.

The rest of your post progresses from that failed assertion, so I won't bother with addressing it.

A year is a long time, it's time enough to forget many things, many arguments made, many that might have seemed reasonable at the time. A year or so ago the 'PR Campaign' was what convinced you Amanda and Raffaele were guilty! Since I read this less than a year ago, in full last July and in part again last October, it was fresher in my mind than yours perhaps.

You weren't the only one with posts of this nature, I collected a few as I wanted to fill out your whole 'friends network' each with a post, but I stopped when I found yours, as I didn't actually expect to find it! I'll keep the links I was collecting, as there's more, I only entered 'campaign' in the search terms, 'PR' wasn't long enough to register I guess. I wonder what I'd get with 'Marriott?'

One of these is Kermit, 'tattling' on Supernaut to Gogherty-Marriot itself in an 'open letter.' I got a kick out of that one, thus included it even though he was one of them spreading the fantasy rather than succumbing to it. I didn't read on from there, I wonder if I did would I find any of the worthy posters of those halcyon days you so enjoy reminiscing about challenging such an absurd statement? Circa page 260, which you can access from one of the posts down below, you can see where Stilicho goes on his 'canceled check campaign' to try and determine whose being paid to post.

Perhaps you should split hairs, loudly denounce me with precision and petulance, and proceed on the attack.


Yes, there's more....


http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5895693&postcount=10429

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5880301&postcount=9057

 

[GrouchoMarxist]

Aren't you being overly literal, quadraginta? Skeptic Ginger developed a catchy phrase with which to start a new thread, and it was extremely successful at getting people's attention. I have always assumed she was writing figuratively about the cartwheel. She explained the reference at the end of her brief post: "The cartwheel BTW, for those of you not familiar with the case, was what Knox did in the police station when she was being questioned. That made the police think she was too casual and made her guilty."

Ginger managed to pique a lot of interest in the case without hitting people over the head with a ton of details. Think of the ridicule she would have garnered if she had also mentioned the swiveling hips, the crying and the eating of pizza, other behaviors of Amanda that Edgardo Giobbi freely admitted were what convinced him of Amanda's guilt. Everyone knows Amanda wasn't found guilty because of a cartwheel -- Ginger's point was that suspicions fell on Amanda because of certain behaviors, and those suspicion led to arrest, imprisonment, trial and conviction.

The people you say discounted Ginger's OP look to me like they had a dog in a fight against Ginger, not about the case. I was on another thread about the case with Ginger and posters came from miles around to disparage her. Apparently, she has enemies at JREF. .

Yup.

 

[quadraginta]

Aren't you being overly literal, quadraginta?

No.

<snip>

Apparently, she has enemies at JREF.

.

I suspect she likes to to think so, but I think that may be more a fond desire than any real reflection of fact.

To have enemies requires that someone believes you are important enough to justify such a strong antipathy.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

More hidden evidence. Seems to be a common gulter theme!
Hmm wasn't Knox's phone already wiretapped before her so called spontaneous statement. Do you think Filomena's or Laura's phones were tapped? This wiretapping also happened before they were ever charged with any crime or an official suspect. Yet its common practice in Italy to wiretap people if a thought crosses their mind that said person might have committed a crime. So I smell a hint of innuendo when you use that KGB remark that they must know for a fact that his father committed a crime when they wiretapped him, yet thats not always the case when it concerns Italy. As you can tell by the fact of when they wiretapped Knox.

Clearly Raffaele and Amanda were under suspicion fairly early after Meredith was discovered; as for Filomena and Laura how do we know their phones weren’t tapped?

I am not debating whether wiretapping by the police in the context of a murder case is right or wrong more whether it is unusual behaviour in Italy, none of the judges or magistrates have ruled them as inadmissible.