Law Lords: Government can bug 'confidential' lawyer-client conversations

[muriel_volestrangler]

via Liberal Conspiracy. The only regular press coverage of this decision I can find is the Sunday Business Post in Ireland (the original case was in Northern Ireland):

The state is allowed to bug communication between lawyers and their clients, the House of Lords has said. The UK's highest court ruled that spy law the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) allows lawyers' conversations to be bugged.

Lawyers are allowed to withhold the details of communication with their clients from the police, prosecutors or courts. This long-established right is designed to allow a client to receive full and proper legal advice. Under legal professional privilege they can tell their lawyer the full facts of a situation without fear of the communications ending up as evidence against them.

RIPA is the law which governs secret surveillance, outlining what the state can and cannot do to obtain information.
...
Lord Carswell also said that the Code explaining RIPA suggests that the law does cover privileged communication.

"The Code makes detailed provision for obtaining authorisation for monitoring consultations covered by legal professional privilege," he said. "It was laid before and approved by Parliament, but no point appears to have been taken that RIPA did not cover such consultations. It would be surprising at least that no objection was made to the inclusion of those provisions in the Code if it was thought that Parliament had not intended that the consultations be covered by RIPA."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/24/lawyer_client_surveillance/

[vinylsolution]

1. Politicians can get away with this kind of sh!t....

.... in Britain, safe in the knowledge that the British people will remain tame and complaint.

No rioting, no protests, no civil disobedience, just eternal willingness to hand over rights and freedoms.

Glad I emigrated all those years ago. I don't miss it at all.

[T_i_B]

2. No protests?

What was that big event yesterday again?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7968721.stm

Tens of thousands of people have marched through London demanding action on poverty, climate change and jobs, ahead of next week's G20 summit.

The Put People First alliance of 150 charities and unions walked from Embankment to Hyde Park for a rally.

Speakers called on G20 leaders to pursue a new kind of global justice.

Police estimate 35,000 marchers took part in the event. Its organisers say people wanted the chance to air their views peacefully.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. "poverty, climate change and jobs" aren't civil rights, though

The Convention on Modern Liberty is about the personal freedoms we have, or are losing; but that got relatively little mainstream coverage for its event at the end of last month.