Policeman admits harvesting data 'for Carmine Gallo'

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 31 - Police officer Marco Malerba told a Milan preliminary investigations judge (GIP) on Thursday that he illegally harvested data as a favour allegedly requested by his "boss", former supercop Carmine Gallo, as part of a major snooping and hacking probe, investigative sources said Thursday.
    Gallo, who is under house arrest, is accused of being one of the leaders of the gang suspected of compiling dossiers on commission by illegally harvesting data from highly sensitive national databases.
    Meanwhile, hacker Massimiliano Camponovo, one of four people arrested in connection with the case, told the judge that he "fears for my safety and that of my family" and admitted he "received data and compiled reports" on behalf of the organization.
    "I am concerned, I could tell there was something obscure behind this system", Camponovo allegedly said during questioning.
    And Nunzio Samuele Calamucci, the main hacker now under house arrest, told GIP Fabrizio Filice, who questioned some of the main suspects in the case on Thursday, that, "from an empirical standpoint, the things I have read on newspapers are impossible to carry out", referring to the alleged activities of the snooping and hacking gang, including accessing information from the police force database.
    Calamucci invoked the right to remain silent before the judge, saying he wants to read investigative papers before speaking to State attorneys investigating the case.
    The suspect in the huge snooping case mainly involving the Italian business world was wiretapped as saying he had 800,000 confidential data on his hard disk, according to Milan anti-mafia prosecutors' documents details of which were published by media outlets.
    Calamucci allegedly had "at his disposal a hard disk containing eight hundred thousand SDIs", or information acquired from the police force database, the documents said.
    "Eight hundred thousand SDI, I have over here", he allegedly said when intercepted last January speaking with former super policeman Carmine Gallo, who was also arrested as one of the suspected ringleaders along with former Milan Fair Foundation president Enrico Pazzali. (ANSA).