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Prison Hack Shows Attorney-Client Privilege Violation (theintercept.com)

Posted by timothy on from the don't-let-this-trouble-you dept.

Advocatus Diaboli writes with this excerpt from The Intercept: An enormous cache of phone records obtained by The Intercept reveals a major breach of security at Securus Technologies, a leading provider of phone services inside the nation's prisons and jails. The materials — leaked via SecureDrop by an anonymous hacker who believes that Securus is violating the constitutional rights of inmates — comprise over 70 million records of phone calls, placed by prisoners to at least 37 states, in addition to links to downloadable recordings of the calls. The calls span a nearly two-and-a-half year period, beginning in December 2011 and ending in the spring of 2014."

"Particularly notable within the vast trove of phone records are what appear to be at least 14,000 recorded conversations between inmates and attorneys, a strong indication that at least some of the recordings are likely confidential and privileged legal communications — calls that never should have been recorded in the first place. The recording of legally protected attorney-client communications — and the storage of those recordings — potentially offends constitutional protections, including the right to effective assistance of counsel and of access to the courts.

15 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. In line with current US thinking by fruviad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Constitutional rights? Bah! Who needs 'em!" seems to be the watchword of the new millenium.

    //unless they're gun rights, of course. The gun nuts get everything they want.

    1. Re:In line with current US thinking by MatthiasF · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, people do not stop being US Citizens or human beings simply because they are incarcerated. Some might have their voting rights revoked for felonies (to stop them from supporting the legalization of their crime, which was a serious problem in the distant past), but they are still afforded almost every other right of their fellow citizens.

    2. Re:In line with current US thinking by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Got a citation for the claim that felons voting to legalize their crimes was a problem in the past?

      Because the way I see it, if there is such a broad danger that a crime won't be a crime if there are enough criminals to support removing it from law, then perhaps it shouldn't be a crime.

      Or putting it another way, if criminals can form enough of a voting bloc to where they make for a significant impact on politics, then perhaps we have made crimes of too many behaviors.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:In line with current US thinking by orlanz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      locked up

      therefore

      don't... deserve

      This is the shit kind of logic that messes up our society. There is no room in there to think that _maybe_ someone is locked up incorrectly. You are guilty because you are locked up, you are locked up because you are guilty. The logic assumes so much about the perfection of our justice system is or the powers that can control our lives. With that as a starting point, what margin is there to question the leaders, or the laws, or to give second chances.

    4. Re:In line with current US thinking by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      they are inmates so considering that being locked up has already been deemed acceptable based on what they've done, don't be thinking they deserve the same rights as an inmate as you and i do on the outside

      Important distinction to keep in mind here: "Securus Technologies" provides phone service/wiretapping to both jails and prisons. People in prison have been convicted of something. You can(and people frequently do), end up in jail if you cannot afford to post bail, or if the court refuses to allow release on bail, pending your trial.

      Aside from more general concerns, that is perhaps the most worrisome population: can't make bail, or don't have the option, so they are presumably mostly poor and/or suspected of something gruesome; and are stuck in jail so have few options for coordinating their upcoming trial with their lawyers aside from using the phone or hoping that their(probably less than stellar and somewhat overworked) legal representation can squeeze all the necessary prep into the jail's visiting hours and policies.

      If they are laboring under all those advantages and prosecutors get to listen to their calls to their attorney, apparently without bothering to disclose this fact, it's hard to even pretend that something remotely close to justice is being done.

      There are some legitimate purposes for keeping an eye on prison phone calls(coordinating witness tampering, relaying instructions to confederates who remain outside, organizing smuggling operations into the prison, etc. are hardly unknown uses of the phone); but do not forget that the incarcerated population includes pre-trial detainees, who have not been found guilty of anything in a court of law yet; and the call metadata and recordings(which apparently have no particular retention limit) are not restricted to use in combating illegal conduct, prison contraband, witness intimidation, etc; but for any purposes that people with access to them see fit. Perhaps most...delightful...is Securus' own "Threads" technology: an intelligence product specifically designed to use call data to associate inmates with the non-incarcerated, so that police can more effectively focus on them. If the poor bastards in jail pre-trial aren't enough, the "More than 600,000 people with billing name and address (not incarcerated)" might object to the fact that they are part of Securus' product.

    5. Re:In line with current US thinking by myowntrueself · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Got a citation for the claim that felons voting to legalize their crimes was a problem in the past?

      Because the way I see it, if there is such a broad danger that a crime won't be a crime if there are enough criminals to support removing it from law, then perhaps it shouldn't be a crime.

      Or putting it another way, if criminals can form enough of a voting bloc to where they make for a significant impact on politics, then perhaps we have made crimes of too many behaviors.

      You are missing the point of the law. The whole purpose of the law is to ensure that everyone is guilty of something.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    6. Re:In line with current US thinking by Jason+Levine · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not only that, but that kind of logic also leads to prisoners becoming repeat offenders even if they try to go straight. A prisoner can get released after serving his time only to find out:

      1) He has no money to afford rent, food, clothing, etc.
      2) He can't live with relatives because of laws forbidding certain residents from allowing felons to live in their apartments.
      3) Jobs pass him up immediately (not even giving him an interview) once he checks "Have you ever been convicted of a felony" on the application form.
      4) Parole officers set odd times for him to check in - requiring him to choose between skipping out on a job he was lucky enough to get or skipping his parole hearing.
      5) Even having a parole officer is an expense that he has to pay for.

      All of this conspires to make it hard for someone released from prison (again, after having served their time) to live their life without committing more crimes. However, any attempt to make it easier for ex-convicts to live honest lives is painted as being soft on crime because "obviously" once-a-criminal-always-a-criminal.

      (John Oliver recently had a great segment on this subject. It's on YouTube, but unfortunately I don't have the link here.)

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    7. Re:In line with current US thinking by TWX · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Private-prison towns would have a real problem, even if in-prison felons were required to vote-absentee, assuming that they would be allowed to register based on their current residence (ie, the prison).

      Everyone should have the right to vote, and individual pockets of abhorrent behavior are exceedingly unlikely to override a fairly reasonable silent majority. Besides, if a local pocket of abhorrent behavior does manage to make law or repeal law to enable conditions that shouldn't be tolerated, a state or federal law could just as easily cover the jurisdiction if needed, and the concept of nullification was destroyed by the civil war.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    8. Re:In line with current US thinking by tnk1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I doubt that many of them bother. Voting is for plebes, the real ballots have dead presidents on them and you don't have to wait until Election Day to cast them.

    9. Re:In line with current US thinking by kilfarsnar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The thinking that does is because there is a system with flaws, that occasionally leads to incorrect outcomes despite the best efforts of everyone involved, that you then refuse to accept that most of the time the system works. Because it does. And no matter how often people tell you they're innocent. Or were wrongfully convicted, they weren't.

      I get the impression that either you are a prosecutor or don't have much experience with the legal system in the United States. The vast majority of people who are charged with a crime plead out, either because they can't afford a decent lawyer or are threatened with all manner of charges by the prosecutor and don't want to take the chance. Even innocent people do this because the deck is overwhelmingly stacked against them. And the prosecutors don't care of they are innocent or not, just about their conviction rate. That is not a picture of a system that is working.

      People think Law and Order is a reasonable representation of our legal system. It is not. People's "best efforts" are often not put towards actual justice but towards locking up whomever was arrested.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    10. Re:In line with current US thinking by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My understanding is that felon disenfranchisement in the USA was always, from the very beginning, aimed at preventing black people from voting.

      Felony disenfranchisement originated long before blacks people were issues in the US or lands that became the US. It (Atimia) originally started in Ancient Greece around 1100 bc and was known as civil death. It was a part of Rome and Most of Europe by around the end of the medieval era.

      In the US, Kentucky was the first state to have it in their state constitution in 1792. It barred anyone from voting or holding office if they had been convicted of bribery, perjury, forgery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

      In 1793, Vermont's constitution gave the state supreme court the ability to disenfranchise those guilty of bribery, corruption, or other crimes.

      In all, before the civil war in 1861, 21 of the 34 different states (Oregon Minnesota Maryland California Wisconsin New York Iowa Texas Louisiana New Jersey Rhode Island Florida Tennessee Delaware Virginia Missouri Alabama Connecticut Mississippi Indiana Ohio) had disenfranchisement built into their state constitution for stuff other than being black before blacks were generally allowed to vote at all. And we all know that Blacks didn't get a universal right to vote until 1870 with the passage/ratification of the 15th amendment.

      In 1882, the US congress even passed a law disenfranchising polygamists from voting and holding political office. After that, some of the disenfranchisement laws were abused to deny blacks the vote which prompted provisions in the civil rights acts as well as the voting rights act in the 1960s.

      But felon disenfranchisement in the USA was not brought about to prevent black people from voting. It is a relic from Ancient Greece and Rome brought into the US by British rule over the colonies and maintained throughout out history for various reasons not related to black people.

    11. Re:In line with current US thinking by budgenator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The calls are prefaced by "This call may be monitored unless it is to an Attorney or an Elected Official , we should be able to take them at their word. In the post 9-11 world, the Law Enforcement and Intelligence communities have been granted unprecedented latitude to protect us from terrorism and we have depended on the good character of honourable men to prevent abuse, they are proving to be not of good character nor honourable.

      I suspect the Courts are not going to be amused, when every Jail-house Lawyer is filing appeals for a can of bugler and clogging up their dockets for years and their are probably a lot of dirt-bag Attorneys on the outside crapping their pants too.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  2. Parallel Construction by nitehawk214 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is why parallel construction was invented. So you can perform all kinds of illegal NSA-style surveillance to get "evidence", then have someone else construct a case around it while not knowing about the surveillance.

    Convenient.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  3. Re:Really? by Jaime2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm pretty sure posting a large sign doesn't make unconstitutional actions legal. That's kind of the point of the Bill of Rights.

  4. Doublethink by TheMeuge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And why is it that you yourself, while acting as if you care about constitutional rights, disparage those who support the right to be armed? I don't want a random person deciding which of my rights I should or shouldn't have based on their individual biases. I want them all.

    Those who support infringing your right to privacy while supporting the 2nd amendment are making a terrible mistake. But by directing your anger towards them and supporting infringing on the right they hold dear, you are not only making the same mistake, but you are also playing into the hands of those who are perfectly happy taking our rights away a little bit at a time.

    Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your ACLU card can't live next to an NRA one, or that the EFF membership depends on you having a specific political allowance as opposed to being committed to preserving as many rights as we can.

    It's good to have different opinions and a debate... But once you say that you're okay sacrificing one right for the false hope of security, just because you don't care to exercise it, you don't get to argue for preservation of others against a similar promise of safety.