Bar Association protests NSA spying
February 24, 2014, 04:25 pm
Bar Association protests NSA spying
By Julian Hattem
The country’s top lawyers’ trade group is raising a
formal complaint about the U.S. government’s support for spying on confidential
legal communications.
The American Bar Association (ABA) last week sent a
letter to leaders at the National Security Agency (NSA) expressing concern
about reports that the agency’s Australian counterpart had spied on a U.S. law
firm working for Indonesia. The agency allegedly offered to share details with
the NSA, including “information covered by attorney-client privilege.”
“The attorney-client privilege is a bedrock legal
principle of our free society and is important in both the civil and criminal
contexts,” the group’s president, James Silkenat, wrote in the letter. “The ABA
has consistently fought to preserve the attorney-client privilege and opposes
government policies, practices and procedures that erode the privilege.”
“The interception and sharing of attorney-client
privileged communications by government agencies — or any third party — raises
concerns, including chilling the full and frank discussion between lawyer and
client that is essential for effective legal representation,” he added.
Documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden
showed that the Australian government kept tabs on discussions between
Indonesian officials and an American law firm which was not named, but was said
to be providing support on trade issues.
Traditional legal protections for attorney-client
communication do not extend to communications with foreign governments.
The lawyers’ organization asked the NSA to “clarify and
explain NSA’s current policies and practices” for protecting attorney-client
confidentiality and asked whether or not those policies were followed in the
Indonesian case.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil
liberties group, cheered the ABA’s letter.
“Just as attorneys must zealously fight for their
clients, the profession must zealously fight against surveillance that would
undermine the ability to represent clients, and must see this most recent
revelation for what it is — a step away from the constitutionally prescribed
system of justice attorneys are sworn to uphold,” Nadia Kayyali, an activist
with the group, wrote in a blog post.
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