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Comment by Vivtek | Hacker News Reader

Ah. This one is actually kind of credible.

But if the client was already accused of terrorism, then this monitoring was on his end, and surely covered by a specific warrant. So this isn't (presumably) the kind of massive data hoovering that is the primary concern; every country does this kind of thing. (Back when I was running Despammed.com I'd get requests from various LEOs - one came with a real live subpoena for information related to an identity theft ring, and one was from Italian authorities pursuing an insult to Mary.)

Where it gets to be a concern is revoking a guy's visa because he's defending a terror suspect.

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I know this isn't an opinion shared by the current US administration, but having a fair trial for one's crimes is a human right. It's a right guaranteed by articles 10 and 11 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Part of having a fair trial includes having legal representation, and the ability to communicate with your legal council in confidence.

Eavesdropping on privileged lawyer-client conversations, regardless of legality is outrageously indecent and should be illegal. Revoking a lawyer's visa because he is representing a particular client is equally outrageous, especially due to the chilling effects it causes upon the legal community making it much more difficult for suspects of serious crimes to find good legal representation.

In The Netherlands a case is usually dropped if evidence is provided that the conversation between a lawyer and his/her client was recorded and analysed.

Given the PRISM revelations (and the today-reported fact that the AIVD has reportedly been recording and analyzing all domestic calls since 2000) try moving to drop all cases since 2000.

I agree with you on moral grounds, but technically human or natural rights are not the same as legal rights. In particular, they cannot be guaranteed by any document the UN produces, unless embodied as legal rights within a functioning judicial system. Instead, these rights are more like ideals.

The US did sign this as a treaty. But yes that is why in Europe most of these rights were signed into law as the European Convention on Human Rights, which adds a court to enforce them. They did remove some like the right to democracy, bizarrely.

I am sure King George tried the same argument against the colonies.

It's not the view of any administration. The client was Norwegian-Chilean. Foreigners not in the US don't have A right to counsel (which is the constitutional basis of attorney client privilege in the US).

And I'd argue that's the way it should be. Every time courts declare something unconstitutional, they use up limited political capital. I don't think defending the "human rights" of non Americans is a valid use of that political capital.

I do not believe this interpretation is correct. In a criminal proceeding in the US, a defendant--whether a citizen or not--has a right to counsel, as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution.

As this is not a criminal prosecution, the right to counsel does not necessarily apply. Under present law, border searches are quite different from normal searches, even for US citizens.

I didn't say "citizen". I said "foreigner not in the US". I was under the impression that the guy was not in the US.

But still, revoking a lawyer's visa for defending someone even elsewhere is pretty sketchy if you ask me.

Extremely sketchy. Not illegal.

You realize how ridiculous this sounds to any ally or trading partner of the US, right? What US authorities are saying is basically that non-citizens of the US do not have basic human rights.

I recall that the current administration reserves for itself the right to assassinate US citizens (and indeed, non US citizens) without trial, and has done so. Everything else pales in comparison.

Actually what it says is a lot more pernicious than that:

Sure, if you are in the US you have a right to legal representation regarding trials, but if you are outside the US, the US reserves the right to say whether you have a right to legal representation. It's worse than saying you don't have basic rights.

Now, maybe the lawyer in question was actually doing something illegal or highly questionable. However we will never know at this point.

He's a high-class, nationally famous lawyer. I seriously doubt he'd do anything illegal.

Whether or not the client is a citizen and inside the bounds of the US is irrelevant. If they're being legally challenged by the US criminal system, they should have legal counsel.

What you describe is basically reinforcing the morals behind Guantanamo - 'as long as they never get here, we don't have to treat them properly'.

It's hard to understand the translation, but I understood it to imply that the client was not being challenged by the U.S. criminal system. The client was norweigian-chilean, accused of threatening norwegian dignitaries. I'd assume the client was in norway being charged by the norwegians.

> Foreigners not in the US don't have A right to counsel (which is the constitutional basis of attorney client privilege in the US).

Do you have a cite for this? I know that there's no right to counsel in civil trials, and this includes immigration courts (say in a deportation hearing), but thought that criminal trials do guarantee right to counsel regardless of citizenship.

Edit: sorry, I misread what you wrote. It's totally reasonable and doesn't deserve downvotes.

FWIW, web searching does seem to indicate that there's no explicit constitutional basis for attorney client privilege, and that it's just provided for by US (and often, state) law.

Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (holding that noncitizens charged with crimes are protected by the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments)

Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698 ((concurrence arguing that noncitizens are protected by the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments)

Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266

Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, 161

etc. The only holding otherwise is the 4th amendment one of a number of appeals courts.

Thanks. I kind of assumed that those protections extended to non-citizens, but it's nice to have actual case law.

I'm not sure but pretty sure they do. There are very few laws in the US discriminating against citizenship.

I didn't say citizen. I said foreigners not in the US. E.g. A yemeni citizen in yemen.

That's probably the most confusing way to describe that.

Why don't you just say a someone who's not American?

Because citizenship and physical presence are both elements. A foreigner on US soil has rights, as does a US citizen on foreign soil. Hence "foreigner not on US soil."

My understanding from the article was that the client was not American, not on US soil, and was not being charged by the US.

Well that's disappointing.

Three cheers for american exceptionism.

> Where it gets to be a concern is revoking a guy's visa because he's defending a terror suspect

Indeed. This is the kind of thing that punches a hole in the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument. He obviously had something to fear - getting his visa revoked. So by the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" logic he had to have something to hide, and that thing had to justify the negative consequences that befell him.

From the CIA/NSA perspective I am sure it just looks like he is someone who consorts with terrorists. They don't consider anybody has a "right" to visit the US in the first place, so removing that "right" cannot be a "harm". Thus there is zero loss from taking a conservative approach and just cancelling his visa. But it is most certainly a harm, probably a severe one to somebody like a prominent lawyer. So this kind of disconnect is exactly why we can't accept "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" kind of arguments.

This is pretty damning. I think the best thing US officials could possibly say, was that he is not a US citizen and therefore does not have the right to privacy in his electronic communication.

I'm from Norway by the way; this guy is a high-profile, nationally famous lawyer. He's not just some random criminal attorney.

Client side monitoring makes way more sense in this case, I'd have to agree.

I suppose people need to learn not to use facebook for private messages. Or Skype. Or any US based corporation.

There's plenty of end user solutions that are secure - depending on the level of surveillance on the client it's going to be relatively difficult to set up secure communications though.

Imagine a scenario where authorities have a warrant to listen in to your communications. They'll install a trojan on your computer that sends screenshots and keyboard input to their computers. So forget about using the PC (or Mac, doesn't matter; while Macs don't get attacked by trojans in the wild, a targeted attack is near impossible to prevent).

That means use a mobile phone (buy a new one in a shop if extra paranoid); use a VPN or that secure chat program, and only use public internet access, like starbucks, as your home internet might be compromised. Then, once a secure channel is established, you're pretty safe.

PS: I suppose buying a new laptop would work too but laptops / PC operating systems are a soft target compared to say an iPhone.

Isn't client-lawyer communication privileged? Similar to husband-wife communication?

Governments can generally do what they want when it comes to foreign nationals, provided they aren't breaking any international treaties. And regardless of the spying involved in this case, the US is free to kick out anybody on a visa that it doesn't like at any time for any reason. It's not nice but that's how it is.

Yes they are privileged, but that doesn't mean the gov't can intercept them, it just means they are inadmissible as evidence in a trial.

Makes sense, and it would taint any evidence discovered using that information... provided you could prove it. Unfortunately, doesn't stop them from playing visa games.

My guess is that that only extends to american lawyers. I could be wrong though.

I'm curious; did you turn in the guy who insulted Mary?

No. I told them if they gave me a subpoena I'd give them what they wanted, and they promised a couple of times that they were working on it, then I never heard from them again. Which is exactly the way I handled every other request to pull back the veil of anonymity.

> Where it gets to be a concern is revoking a guy's visa because he's defending a terror suspect.

Except that this is speculation by the lawyer. Unless the lawyer's chats included, "Yes, I will help you smuggle something into the US," I don't see why the US would bother pulling the lawyer's visa. What exactly are they getting from doing that?

This smells to me of a guy trying to get fifteen minutes of fame by riding on the public outcry. I mean... is it even worth digging to verify whether or not his visa was actually pulled?

While that is speculation on the lawyer's part, it's also speculation on your part to assume he did something especially wrong. That's the problem with this type of monitoring(and revoking), it turns each case, as well as public opinion, towards guilty until proven innocent.

Not to mention, if I remember correctly, just being a known associate of a terrorist (i.e. talking to one) is enough to revoke or deny a foreign visa. To me, this whole situation seems more like a "he talked directly to a terrorist, revoke his visa because he's a 1st degree contact in that terrorist's social network (not looking at what his profession is or what the purpose of the contact is)" than any other possible situation. It's not about what the US is getting from this specific revocation, it's more that they likely have a specific set of guidelines in place and this guy got swept up in an inaccurate net.

> it's also speculation on your part to assume he did something especially wrong.

I don't think getting your fifteen minutes of fame is especially wrong. The fault is on the part of the public for being credible; that's how the market works, no?

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