Strumenti di indagine con impatto a largo raggio: le perquisizioni online e le ricadute sui soggetti terzi non indagati

The article examines online searches as investigative tools with significant impacts on fundamental rights and privacy, affecting both suspects and uninvolved third parties. In fact, these are investigative methods aimed at the indiscriminate acquisition of data of a communicative and non-communicative nature, without the knowledge of the person under investigation and those with whom he comes into contact, for an indefinite time and in a virtual place. Having highlighted the lack of adequate regulation, the analysis focuses on the necessity to balance investigative needs with the protection of fundamental rights, such as privacy, freedoms and the inviolability of the home. It then dwells on the wavering position of the jurisprudence in relation to the legal nature of the digital data acquired, giving an account of the recent decision of the Constitutional Court which seems to have put a point of clarity on the dichotomy between correspondence and communication. The potential extension of the range of action of online searches to an indeterminate and indeterminable crowd of people unrelated to the facts under investigation requires with the utmost urgency new rules aimed at ensuring certain safeguards also about third parties not under investigation, on which the Author dwells in the conclusions.