Lawyers and journalists can no longer communicate confidentially with their clients, according to a new report by two rights advocacy groups.The report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union is based on a survey of lawyers and journalists working in national security and intelligence. Report author G. Alex Smith says of the findings: ‘If the US fails to address these concerns promptly and effectively, it could do serious, long-term damage to the fabric of democracy in the country.'

Limited protection

Lawyers interviewed for the report feared that US surveillance was a violation of the lawyer-client confidentiality and violated the Sixth Amendment protecting the right to counsel in criminal prosecutions and hence the ability to communicate freely. The survey interviewed 42 lawyers, a number of whom said that they were finding it harder to build trust with clients –especially those abroad who were aware of the NSA's access to information. They were also worried tha NSA monitoring would allow the government to have advance knowledge of their defense plans and that attempts to build a case ‘might put people in harm’s way,’ one lawyer said.

Limited protection

According to the article, the US government claims that it applies certain ‘minimisation’ procedures to protect attorney-client  communications in the ‘upstream’ collection conducted under one section of the surveillance statutes. However, the report concludes that protection is very limited, ‘with all the clauses and caveats indicating that those limiting procedures don’t apply to other major surveillance initiatives – and if they do, only when clients are post-indictment, which is when the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is directly implicated.’  Source: The Intercept