Prosecutors Are Reading Emails From Inmates to Lawyers

Bar associations should demand that lawyers allow clients encrypted email communication. The adoption problem for encrypted email (all encrypted controlled by the client machine using open source software so google or whoever doesn't also have access to the plaintext) is so hard because it takes BOTH parties to keep communication secure. If all lawyers had to do this, people would become much more aware and maybe demand their medical and tax information sent over email also be encrypted.

I was listening to NPR recently and there was an interview with a former Clinton administration official [1] who mentioned almost in passing that prosecutors regularly infringe on the right to privileged conversation between a defendant and their lawyer. Specifically, he mentioned that the room you are given with your lawyer has paper thin walls that the police and prosecutor folks can hear through easily, and when in jail there is no way to have a real private conversation with your lawyer as well.<p>[1] <a href="http://wfae.org/post/webb-hubbell" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wfae.org&#x2F;post&#x2F;webb-hubbell</a>

Wikipedia tells me that both of the judges that ruled emails are unprivileged were born in 1946. The judge who ruled against the government, however, was born in 1955.<p>I don&#x27;t think this is a coincidence. I&#x27;d be surprised if the former two judges even used email at all.

&gt;She seemed to take particular offense at an argument by a prosecutor, F. Turner Buford, who suggested that prosecutors merely wanted to avoid the expense and hassle of having to separate attorney-client emails from other emails sent via Trulincs.<p>Would it be that hard to specify one e-mail address as a &quot;priviledged address&quot; (with a signature from the lawyer about such) and filter out those? It&#x27;s really surprising how people can go to court and argue such claims.

<a href="http://youtu.be/WTPimUSIWbI" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;WTPimUSIWbI</a><p>Attorney client privilege is one of the biggest fallouts from mass surveillance. Earlier this year there was a legal hackathon at Mozilla where I tried to make a product to help that.

&gt; Especially since he is acting as a public defender in this case — meaning the government pays him at $125 per hour — Mr. Fodeman argued that having to arrange an in-person visit or unmonitored phone call for every small question on the case was a waste of money and time.<p>The juncture of these two factoids struck me as odd.

If inmates are allowed to email, and also allowed private communication with their lawyers, why wouldn&#x27;t they be able to have a registered lawyers&#x27; email address not be monitored, or to be able to flag an email as privileged <i>exactly in the way they do with postal mail?</i><p>&gt;Prosecutors once had a “filter team” to set aside defendants’ emails to and from lawyers, but budget cuts no longer allow for that, they said.<p>They seem to know that it&#x27;s wrong, they&#x27;re just becoming more confident that judges will let them do whatever they want.<p>I&#x27;d accept that inmates shouldn&#x27;t be allowed to use the internet at all before I&#x27;d accept that budget cuts have made it too expensive for prosecutors not to use privileged communications in court.

I worry for this country.

&quot;...budget cuts no longer allow for that, they said.&quot;<p>Is the amount of money being spent on prisons in the United States really shrinking?<p>Honestly, I have no idea.

In most circumstances I am all for attorney-client privilege. But if you are in jail or prison and provided a medium to communicate to the outside world and that medium requires you to accept a consent to monitoring agreement before each use, then you should have no expectation of privacy regardless of whom the communication is with. The prison system has proper ways to initiate secure attorney-client communication and these people failed to use it, that’s their problem. However, I do think the law needs to be updated to allow for secure email communication between the attorney and client, but until that occurs they need to live within the confines of the law.

Surely I believe here ... and I think we should work out on this. <a href="http://www.bloggerbulk.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloggerbulk.com</a>