Comment Re:There can be no defense of this. (Score 2) 184
I'm conflicted. On the one hand my initial response was like yours. Yet on the other I don't see why, if you were trying to stop a serious threat, spies shouldn't be able to monitor these communications in principle, with some clear restrictions:
Firstly we have the perennial problem that the security services are allowed to spy on anyone with very little oversight. If they want to spy on someone they should be required to get a court order, and that court order should be made public so that everyone can see what they are doing. If the court order cannot be immediately made public for legitimate security reasons then it should be made public as soon as possible (i.e. certainly within a year, preferably sooner). Furthermore, information gathering should not start until that court order is issued - i.e. there should be no requirement for ISPs/telcos to log and retain traffic "just in case" it is needed at a later date.
So given that we already have this problem, further extending the powers of the seucrity services seems like a bad plan.
Futhermore, this stuff is always justified as "to stop a serious threat", and yet there seems to be very little evidence that there are lots of "serious threats" that need stopping. And as always, this stuff is always spun as "to stop the criminals" and attention is diverted from the fact that not everyone who uses a lawyer is a criminal.
1/ If the information gathered by spying was specifically barred from being used in court
Even if you can't use the evidence in court, it can be used to influence a court case, either by directing a line of questioning, or helping with parallel construction of evidence.
2/ If additional authority had to be granted by the judiciary for the act
3/ If there were clear checks and balances in place to deal with abuse.
Except these things clearly aren't happening, or even intended to happen.
The whole point of communications with your lawyer being privalidged is that you can have a completely frank discussion with them in order to prepare your defense. This cannot happen if you are constantly having to avoid incriminating yourself - one of the reasons for getting a lawyer is that they can tell you when to stop talking to avoid that, so if you can't discuss this with them then that seriously harms your defense. If the authorities believe that there is no merit in allowing private legal discussions then this should be true on both sides - the prosecution should be required to make all their discussions public too. As it stands, the laws are very one-sided and stack the deck against anyone the authorities decide to attack, guilty or not.