Hello everyone and welcome to ZDTech, ZDNet’s daily editorial podcast. I’m Pierre and today I’m going to tell you how the Google Maps application has recently turned into a luxury informant to put a beautiful end to the long run of a Sicilian mafia godfather.
Have you ever heard of Gioacchino Gammino? Aged 61, this Italian citizen originally from Sicily was at the head of the mafia group “Stidda”. After escaping from Rebibbia prison in Rome in 2002, where he was serving a life sentence for a murder committed several years earlier, the latter had since been on the run. If I mention his case in the past tense, it is because he was finally caught up with justice, after being arrested in Spain, near Madrid, where he had been hiding for years under the skin of a tradesman while what is most honest.
While Italian investigators were desperate to catch this big shot of the Sicilian mafia, they were surprised to receive help that was certainly unusual, but nevertheless decisive in his capture. If the latter is behind bars today, he owes it to Google Maps, Google’s mapping application, and more particularly to the Street View functionality of the platform.
Google Maps at the bedside of the tax authorities!
After following in the footsteps of the mobster to the town of Galapagar, about forty kilometers from Madrid, the Italian police were surprised to see the man on one of the Street Views images, despite the face blurring rules in force on the Google tool.
“The photo allowed us to confirm the investigation that we were developing in the traditional way,” explains Nicola Atiero, deputy director of the Italian anti-mafia police unit, referring to the outcome of this somewhat special hunt.
This is not the first time authorities have used Google Maps for verification and investigation. In 2015, the seasoned eyes of tax officials in the Lot-et-Garonne department were already trying to visualize undeclared swimming pools in the town of Marmande. Tedious work, but which had made it possible to detect 300 undeclared swimming pools, i.e. a shortfall of 100,000 euros for the tax authorities and the municipality. Since then, the French tax authorities have made an agreement with Google to automate this search. A word of advice to all those who would be tempted to build an extension to their home without declaring it, don’t forget to take a look on Google Maps before you start.