SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Assange lawyers sue CIA for spying on them:
Lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sued the US Central Intelligence Agency and its former director Mike Pompeo on Monday, alleging it recorded their conversations and copied data from their phones and computers.
[...] They said the CIA worked with a security firm contracted by the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where Assange was living at the time, to spy on the Wikileaks founder, his lawyers, journalists and others he met with.
[...] Richard Roth, the New York attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the alleged spying on Assange's attorneys means the Wikileaks founder's right to a fair trial has "now been tainted, if not destroyed."
[...] It said Undercover Global, which had a security contract with the embassy, swept information on their electronic devices, including communications with Assange, and provided it to the CIA.
In addition it placed microphones around the embassy and sent recordings, as well as footage from security cameras, to the CIA.
This, Roth said, violated privacy protections for US citizens.
Anyone knowledgeable on the law who can help unpack all the legal angles here (non-US citizen, US lawyers, in an embassy in a foreign country involving a private company)?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by rpnx on Friday August 19 2022, @02:29PM
I am not a lawyer, but I think it's very illegal for the government to obtain attorney client information. That's one of two categories (the other being doctor-patient) that the government cannot obtain even with a warrant. However, previous cases held that the government could force a suspect to testify about a national security issue, but that because doing so was a violation of the 5th amendment, that they couldn't use the information to prosecute them.
This is interesting though because attorney-client and doctor-patient are both considered privileged, which is higher than the protection given by the 5th Amendment. I suspect it could render the information unusable in court but they would not be able to be sued for damages.