UPDATE 1-Italy govt wins Senate confidence vote on wiretapping reform

The Italian government on Thursday won a confidence vote in the upper house of parliament on a decree that will make it easier for magistrates to use spy software in investigations into public sector corruption.

The vote comes at a time of high friction within the coalition, with the small centrist Italia Viva party sparring on a daily basis with its much bigger partners, the Democratic Party (PD) and anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. However, party discipline prevailed in the Senate vote, where Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's administration has a particularly slender majority, and the government won the motion by 156-118.

Confidence votes are often used in Italy to accelerate the passage of legislation by truncating debate. If the government loses a confidence vote it is obliged to resign. The coalition will almost certainly have to call a confidence vote on the same bill in the lower house before the end of the month, or else the legislation will expire.

The law will let magistrates extend the use of Trojan-horse style software to help them prosecute crimes against the public administration. It will also allow for probes to be extended if the spying throws up evidence of unrelated criminal activity. The legislation was championed by 5-Star, which has made fighting corruption one of its core concerns. Critics of the bill say it gives too much power to magistrates to snoop on people's lives.