Slashdot Mirror
NSA Ally Spied on US Law Firm
mendax points out a story at the NY Times about evidence that the Australian Signals Directorate notified the NSA in 2013 that it was spying on discussions between Indonesia and an American law firm. The information gathered by the Directorate included material covered by attorney-client privilege. The Times says:
"Most attorney-client conversations do not get special protections under American law from N.S.A. eavesdropping. Amid growing concerns about surveillance and hacking, the American Bar Association in 2012 revised its ethics rules to explicitly require lawyers to 'make reasonable efforts' to protect confidential information from unauthorized disclosure to outsiders. ... Several newly disclosed documents provide details of the cooperation between the United States and Australia, which share facilities and highly sensitive intelligence, including efforts to break encryption and collect phone call data in Indonesia. Both nations have trade and security interests in Indonesia, where Islamic terrorist groups that threaten the West have bases."
No, Australia spied on Indonesia, and intercepted communications from US based lawyers representing them in trade negotiations with the US. Australia shared this with the US.
This is about Australia or didn't you catch that? Slashdot is an AMERICAN site. What about Snowden and the NSA?
"Five Eyes", AC: We have a longstanding agreement with some of our select Freedom Buddies, to engage in 'intelligence sharing' and, when convenient, have one of us do what it would be illegal for another of us to do, then pass the results along, nice and squeaky clean.
I certainly couldn't tell you about the degree to which this is or isn't a wildly unequal partnership, or whether that varies by issue and location; but in this case (Australia volunteering to be oh-so-helpful to the US on a matter between the US and Indonesia), I suspect that team Australia wasn't exactly reigning the NSA in...