Jan 19 2009
On Facebook, Sicilian Mafia Is a Hot Topic
Mr. De Lucia said prosecutors were trying to determine whether members of pro-Mafia online groups were mostly “some kids who want to have fun” or gangsters looking for new ways to send coded messages to one another.
So far, the authorities said they had not found evidence of any criminal activity on the sites.
Last week, a member of Parliament’s anti-Mafia commission, Senator Gianpiero D’Alia, called for a government investigation and urged his colleagues to remove their Facebook pages until the site took down pro-Mafia groups.
“We can’t accept in virtual reality what we don’t accept in real reality,” Mr. D’Alia said in a telephone interview.
The motion was largely symbolic. By all accounts, the long arm of Italian law does not reach as far as Facebook’s servers in Palo Alto, Calif., and praising the Mafia is protected by free speech laws in both countries.
A spokesman for Facebook, who declined to be identified for an article on the Mafia, said the company “may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws,” but added that the company did not reveal information “until we have a good-faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards.”
The Italian authorities say one of their biggest concerns — beyond that the network could facilitate crime — is that the Mafia could use sites like Facebook to build a tacit acceptance among otherwise law-abiding citizens that it relies on to function.
“This is more worrisome,” said Col. Iacopo Mannucci of the Carabinieri in Palermo, which last month arrested nearly 100 people charged with trying to reconstitute the Mafia’s leadership council for the first time since Mr. Riina’s arrest in 1993.
Many say Facebook, which has 150 million members worldwide, is a healthy tool to foster debate. Indeed, others are using Facebook to mobilize resistance against the Mafia. An Italian group called “Mafia Off Facebook” has 166,000 members and held a one-day Facebook blackout on Wednesday, when members did not log on to the site to protest the presence of pro-Mafia groups.
Another group, whose name politely translates as “Yes to Breasts, No to Totò Riina,” questions why Facebook recently deemed offensive and removed photos of mothers breast-feeding, but allowed pages lauding Mafiosi.
More than 23,000 people have joined “In Honor of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino and Their Police Escort,” which celebrates Mr. Borsellino and Mr. Falcone, another high-profile anti-Mafia judge who was killed by the Mafia in a bomb attack in 1992.
On another site, one member quoted Mr. Falcone as saying: “Men die, but their ideas remain. Their moral struggles remain, and they continue to walk with the legs of other men.”
And on their Facebook pages.
On Facebook, Sicilian Mafia Is a Hot Topic – By RACHEL DONADIO – Published: January 19, 2009 – This story was found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/world/europe/20italy.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
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