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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."
A US law firm been spied upon by a US gov agency via Australia with the OK of someone in the US gov?
Australia just seems to the post colonial geogrpahic tap point for the US gov fishing for US attorney-client conversations.
Skilled US staff are sheltered from directly transcribing the US voices and won't raise any legal issues.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is the best example which embodies the core question, of who prevails: is it the law that is above the government or is it the government above the law. This particular example of spying the law firm which was representing one side simply demonstrated that the United States has been thrown back to pre-Magna carta era. Basically, if you pose a shred of risk to the establishment and you are in court, you have no chances to privacy and a fair trial. Magna carta basically stated that even the king is not above the law. Now we no longer have the laws that are not being broken by overzealous eunuchs, who are only laughing at the rest of the population . Most interestingly, last year Supreme court rejected the supreme court case brought by the lawyers about the client-attorney confidentiality citing that such fears are "unsubstantiated". Supreme court is presided by judge John G. Roberts. This is the same judge, John G. Roberts, who is appointing FISA judges and is heavily involved "overseeing". So, he said he was not aware of spying.... What a scum seated as chief justice of the country
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.
> where Islamic terrorist groups that threaten the West have bases
You know if you don't stand up and say enough of this shit its never going to stop. ATM we have a better chance of getting wipped out by a meteor then we do by some bad ass strapped to a bomb. I get almost side swiped at least once per day while driving on the highway. So what if we get attacked once in a while more people are killed by their diets and the chemicals used in food, there's the governmental outrage about these food terrorist companies that are causing serious damage to out health and economy.
On top of that terrorism is good for the economy and populations control.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
"Australia spied on Indonesia" was just the 'laundering' or local or needed technical step.
Material from US based lawyers ended up with the US gov - no matter the help needed or sharing with/via/for/from Australia.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Am I to understand, that a lawyer is complaining about something sleazy and underhanded? Really? A lawyer? The same guys who sleaze their way to the top, then get political jobs so they can sleazy their way to the top again? They are the ones complaining about something possible being sleazy happening to them? Really? Let me get you a tissue.
Yes, sure, shoot the messenger.
Bored much today?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Am I to understand, that a lawyer is complaining about something sleazy and underhanded? Really? A lawyer? The same guys who sleaze their way to the top, then get political jobs so they can sleazy their way to the top again? They are the ones complaining about something possible being sleazy happening to them? Really? Let me get you a tissue.
Also the same guys and girls who are the first to defend the people from government overreach. Who serve nonprofits and NGOs and the public sector and the poor. Some lawyers are assholes. Others dedicate their lives in service.
Either way, do you really think it's a good idea to have the government listening in when you go to get legal advice about your problems with them or someone else?
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...
US lawyers have the legal expectation not to have their work ending up on a US gov file.
Where will this recording stop? US international legal work is fair game to the US gov?
All international legal work conducted within the USA is fair game?
Some international related legal work within the USA is fair game?
Say your a US defence team working at the US state level:
At a state level lawyers can be recorded by federal officials so long as they affirm they won't directly help the state case?
A state case can be recorded by other states officials so long as they affirm they won't use the material or directly help the state?
A state case can be recorded by state officials so long as they affirm they won't use the material or directly help the case?
Very interesting times for the average US legal teams.
Your expensive US defence team becomes like an East German lawyer - sitting next to you in court ensuring all the paper work is correct.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is a US law reform issue - what can US lawyers expect when working on cases of interest to the US gov. Australian politics is the same as always: share all with the USA.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Is about material provided in confidence that cannot be used in court.
There's no reason the appropriate authorities can't listen in, if there is reasonable suspicion that the lawyer may be complicit in a future criminal act.
There have been cases where the lawyer became complicit in a later crime. case in point: Lynne Stewart. Who perhaps should have been sentenced to death for her treasonous actions.
Attorney-client privilege protects information pertaining to their case and legal advise. It doesn't protect against prosecution for conspiring with the lawyer, or using the lawyer as a channel to commit further crimes.
Every time you read one of these stories, and are (hopefully) a little bit outraged at how the NSA has dropped every pretense of complying with our Constitution, and has embraced the most despicable aspects of tyrannical rule without any notion of "national defense", you should remember that without the heroic acts of a single young man, and the tireless efforts of a shamefully small handful of journalists and publishers, we would either be ignorant of these monstrous acts or vulnerable to charges of paranoia.
We now have proof, and government doesn't even deign to make false denials. We have government officials calling for the assassination of Edward Snowden and some of the journalists with whom he entrusted these documents. We have everything we need to make a decision about whether we really consent to be governed in this way.
There has never been a perfect hero outside of myth. But there are necessary heroes, and Snowden is one of those.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Call me crazy but I thought Slashdot is, or was, a technology site, and if I'm not even more insane, not just America possesses technology.
Of course with regard to Pine Gap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... being a token joint facility, it's very likely everything was being done by Americans, it's just that the paperwork creates a trail for obfuscation when those Americans paid by the US government and working for the Australian government on behalf of the US government. Any actual Australian government employees were just token players, clearly in all matters beyond the shores of Australia the Australian government simply obeys the 'er' suggestions of the US government.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
From TFA:
The Australians have obtained nearly 1.8 million encrypted master keys, which are used to protect private communications, from the Telkomsel mobile telephone network in Indonesia
Anyone know what this is about? What are that master keys, and what protocol is using them?
Last I checked, in a democracy, the parliament/congress and (depending on the country) maybe judges are the ones to make laws.
Besides, we aren't discussing how moral/ethical/trusted the lawyer profession is. so your remark is offtopic in the context of "NSA violating the lawyer-client confidentiality by spying on lawyers, thus hurting the client as well".
How would you like to be on the "receiving end"?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The USA is not just "every nation" - they have the rule of law and US lawyers know what legal protections they have when working in the USA or outside the USA wrt to their 'intelligence services"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
NSA and Signals Intelligence has the ability to spy on clients and attorneys in jail, in their cells, in court, and in the attorneys office. Signals Intel has the ability to do a variety of imaing techniques, inluding extracting and monitoring thought via Remote Neural Monitoring and TAMI, which is built into satellites and radar. It has many many miles range, and they can also see and hear you through the walls. Juries can also be spied on, along with the judges, and the DA and judges and court officers are usually in on it.
Signals intel does electron imaging from remote locations. They have mind reading and mind altering radar, and atomic grade long range laser microphones, thermal and radar imaging of objects/particles/people, and also human and electronics electrical activity monitoring, tracking, and decoding.
Details at http://www.oregonstatehospital...
No information, human memory, or communcation can be kept private from these guys. Set ups, black operations, spy games, mind control on the public and deception is all around us. You cannot infiltrate their game because they know whos after them, and I am telling you they are able to track and monitor this shit well.
If they are spying on "everybody" then naturally they have not left anybody out? They just better hurry up and release a story about spying on homos. The NSA doesn't want to be called homophobes and have men in make-up demonstrating outside the NSA building do they? Hey! cannot hold the victim status if they are left out of this! Oh and don't forget Jesse Jackson, what ever you do NSA. Thank you Philip. http://child-porn-hacking-and-...
In a country where it's officially believed that the polygraph is Wonder Woman's lasso of truth it shouldn't amaze me so much that people are taking this shit seriously.
I suggest strstr that you consider reality instead because it's scary enough without going past the wall of voodoo. Real stuff on the public record is able to listen in at range in a variety of situations - for example Theremin's passive bug found in a US Embassy in the 1950's (something about it is on wikipedia somewhere).
Also you should keep in mind the Snowden situation - all those toys don't help much if toy soldiers are using them. Incompetence of the trackers is keeping you from being tracked everywhere.
What the fuck is wrong with you? It's a system. This system has been in place for decades. J. Edgar Hoover did shit that makes these guys look like liberal pussies when he was running the FBI. Killing one person or even hundreds wouldn't change the system. Hell, they think they're doing the right thing and I'd say most of the public probably thinks so too.
On Socialist Slashdot beta fucks you!
My understanding is that the concern is not about these relatively trivial trade negotiations specifically(though if any of the unnamed 'customers' who found the intelligence products useful were American firms rather than government entities, that would make the US claims of not engaging in economic espionage for the benefit of individual companies rather tenuous); but about the broader question of whether US clandestine activity has the slightest regard for attorney-client relations(in this case, Indonesia had engaged a US law firm, and the Australians noted that the goodies might involve that material).
Some lawyers (particularly the ones dealing with political unlikeables, like the Gitmo remnants) have long suspected that the usual protections for attorney-client privilege were being more or less blatantly violated; but the matter has remained unresolved because, without some evidence, nobody ever has standing, the court finds the plaintiffs' concerns to be merely speculative, etc.
This case, while singularly un-sinister in terms of the matter at hand, strongly suggests that attorney-client communications are open season for the US clandestine services, if they care, which is news given the protections theoretically afforded to such(particularly in light of the revelation of DEA, and possibly other, use of 'parallel construction' to generate non-tainted 'independent' discovery of evidence uncovered by classified surveillance mechanisms that they did not wish to disclose at trial, even to the judge or prosecution, much less the defense).
It's also true that not even all American Slashdotters live in the US. People move around and stuff.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Ah yes. The 'Special Administrative Measures' case. Do remind me about how that relates to this story?
He's hiding in the corner afraid of making Joe Biden the 45th president.
Seriously, do you think killing a man is really called for? All it would do is make the government demand more constitutional violations in the name of BHO. Remember Obama would become the rallying cry of every American when they carted you non-conformists off to the gulags.. errr I mean gitmo.
What is needed is for congress to grow a pair and pass a law restricting the NSA. And then they need to actually ignore the claims of racism and impeach the bastards who violate it. There is a difference between monitoring foreigners in foreign lands and US citizens in any land. But just in case someone wants to whine that bush did it, we can impeach Bush too. Although rarely is it ever legit to do something you know is wrong or illegal or unconstitutional simply because someone else did it too so I don't really buy into the but so and so did it on something this freaking obvious.
Which kind of explains why senior Australian and American politicians have been in Indonesia recently..
Hate to be the Australian Ambassador to Indonesia at the moment..
Rumour has it that the Indonesians regularly send encrypted birthday greetings for Australian operatives so we will probably just end up with another round of mock outrage and contrition from both sides and then it will be back to the cricket..
I think that its a shame Shirley Temple Black is dead because now there is no one to lead a global round of "Good ship lollypop."
No lawmaker writes laws -- they can't, they don't have the expertise for that. Either they ask their staff of lawyers to write the law, or too often lawyers employed by special interests write the law and offer it on a platter to the lawmaker to sponsor.
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The problem here is not exactly that the US or some other country spied on Indonesia but that in whatever course of events, US citizens who also generally receive special treatment (lawyers) were spied on and this information was passed to the US government where it could have benefited. What effectively happened here is the US government gained information that it is constitutionally and as a matter of US law, barred from gathering and either did use it to their advantage or had the opportunity to do so.
You gain an enormous advantage in knowing what the opposition is doing in any matters of law. Good lawyers study scenarios in order to understand and anticipate the moves of their opposing counsel and recognize when their tactics are working. But knowing first hand could make the difference between winning and losing. That in and of itself does make spying on foreign nations worth while, it just doesn't excuse violating the US constitution and principles of law in the process of doing it. If a normal ordinary person or lawyer were to gain access to this kind of information through a third party (directly or unsolicited), it could cause them to lose their license, case or claim they are representing, or even worse- land them in jail if they used it.
Did the NSA rearrange bits on the law firm's cable-connected computers?
That would be a key constitutional trip line.
Hey, look, everybody! It's our old friend Fjord Fairlane!
If you're going to try to move the goalposts like that, Thin White Duke, you'll have to do better than a link to the Daily Ruse.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The correct word is partner. The reason they have the five eyes )Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) is so that they can work their ways around laws in one country by having another country do the spying then sharing the information back to the country that wanted the data to begin with. It's all about getting around the laws and as the article said "The bulletin notes only that the counsel’s office “provided clear guidance” and that the Australian agency “has been able to continue to cover the talks, providing highly useful intelligence for interested US customers.”"
That means that the information was provided to American intelligence agencies and that they are violating the clear prohibition against spying on Americans.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
"US lawyers know what legal protections they have when working in the USA or outside the USA"
Just like anyone else. Not much :D
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
> ... , where Islamic terrorist groups that threaten the West have bases."
Yes, and regularly negotiate trade agreements with these terrorists, in this case for buying shrimps (the Buba Gump kind) as was the case for the spying here.
After the Snowden leak has shown that instead of professionals it's full of politically well connected toy soldier horse judges that couldn't find their arse with an atlas you still believe that?
Many of us never were (and are proud not to be) Americans.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The system is not broken Chicken Little. It has problems but they are solvable. And I would argue that the system has kept us safer than not.
"cold fjord is a communist trying to subvert the principles the US was founded on."
So is the US government. Does that make them commies, too?
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
That was a marvelous non-refutation of the AC. ;)
The damage done to the core of our society is out of proportion to any potential safety benefits we might have seen. Say, you don't happen to have a citation on how many terrorist plots have been foiled in the US, do you? And at a cost of what, versus what amount of damage, in USD is fine, thanks. Until you can show some use for all this, you take it on faith that it benefits you.
And you have a figure for the harm to our society by spying on overseas communications? I'm not talking about the spying on journalists in the US which is illegal but about this particular incident here and others like it. This is what spy agencies do. If they aren't doing this then there is no point to having them at all. You may as well close up shop.
Come on, really? He's screaming that there is a war on American citizens and the system is broken which is a ridiculous assumption. Just the fact that he's allowed to scream that crazy shit without his door being busted down says he's a fool. In fact, if he really believed it he'd never open his mouth out of fear of repercussions.
I'm not talking about the spying on journalists in the US which is illegal but about this particular incident here and others like it.
Quote from TFH: "NSA Ally Spied on US Law Firm".
Quote from the fine OP of this thread: "NSA to violate the 4th Amendment rights of 300 million Americans"
Quote from the fine title of this thread: "War on American Citizens"
Way to move the goalposts! Like, overseas! We're discussing spying on AMERICANS here. This "particular incident" involves AMERICANS. How do you not get that? We WEREN'T talking about spying on the communications of foreigners.
I'm sorry, I thought it was something about an American Law Firm and communications between it and their Indonesian clients. Did I get it wrong? This has what exactly to do with a war on Americans?
As you said, American Law Firm. You keep saying it, but I'm not sure how you keep missing it.
Are you trying to suggest that spying on Americans is okay? And that we should violate the attorney-client privilege of those Americans, which exists both here and in Indonesia?
What Americans? Oh! You mean the lawyers working for the Indonesians! I don't think they're actually after the lawyers, they want info on the Indonesians. You know the privilege is for the client don't you. You do know they'll never use this info in court. I ask again, what do you think is the reason we have spy agencies? Why do they call them spies? What do spies do? ????