Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale

It was created from the remains of the Special Anti-terrorism Unit, built up in the 1970s by General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa to combat terrorism in Italy.

Having defeated the Red Brigades in the 1980s, the Special Anti-terrorism Unit was also employed to investigate organized crime.

The ROS command center coordinates the activities of 26 regional anti-crime sections.

Buried in a recent 158-page U.N. report on how terrorists use the Internet is the so-called "protocol of a systematic approach".

The document outlines the stages law enforcement agencies should go through when conducting electronic surveillance of suspects: first, by obtaining data and “cookies” stored by websites like Facebook, Google, eBay and PayPal; second, by obtaining location data from servers used by VoIP Internet phone services (like Skype); then, by conducting a “smart analysis” of these data before moving on to the most serious and controversial step: intercepting communications, exploiting security vulnerabilities in communications technologies for “intelligence-gathering purposes,” and even infecting a target computer with Trojan-horse spyware to mine data.