2 Questions on Eavesdropping: Pres. Clinton's role and attorney/client confidentiality
Posted by JDPriestly in General Discussion: Politics
Mon Aug 06th 2007, 12:51 AM
The eavesdropping law is not specific to the U.S. The EU has already enacted a measure REQUIRING broad surveillance of its own citizens. I suspect the whole eavesdropping project is planned to encompass the communications of the entire world. I also suspect that the groups, individuals or organizations that are sponsoring this pro-eavesdropping movement find the U.S. Constitution to be a nasty impediment to their design. I'm sorry to be proposing what appears to be a conspiracy theory, but the following items support my suggestion that, indeed, the whole eavesdropping campaign is part of a vast design or program that reaches back to at least 1997!!!!!!!!, before terrorism was the excuse du jour.
My first question: (My apologies to Hillary fans, but the truth must out however much it hurts.) What was President Clinton’s position on the collection of personal data and communications of citizens through indiscriminate government electronic eavesdropping without regard for the basic human right to privacy? What was it in 1997???? And what is Hillary’s true position on it today?
I ask this because, according to the attached article, the EU began to talk about allowing broad scale eavesdropping and rescinding laws that protected freedom of communication and the privacy of individuals, allegedly encouraged by the US at the G7 meeting in 1997!!!!!, while Clinton was president. At that time (1997!!!!!), the argument was that the broad, across-the-board invasion of privacy was justified by the need to fight cybercrime. I suspect the concern then was not just about identity theft, but also about copyright violations, etc. After 9/11, of course, the excuse used was terrorism. It appears that terrorism is just a more marketable, more socially acceptable excuse for the intrusion than cybercrime in general.
Here is an excerpt from an article on a German or Austrian website on this issue. I do not vouch for the website. It appears to overly concerned about protecting violations of copyright and other law for my taste. Nevertheless, I found the following item very interesting because it suggests that the U.S. was pushing broad surveillance in 1997:
Die dauerhafte Speicherung personenbezogener Daten aus Telefonienetzen und dem Internet war ohne konkreten Anlass und ohne Zustimmung des Betroffenen bisher gesetzlich verboten. Nun wird es Pflicht und muss in den Jahren 2007/8 EU-weit umgesetzt werden. Alle Verkehrsdaten aus den digitalen Telefonienetzen - wer mit wem wann wo telefoniert - müssen zwischen einem und zwei Jahren gespeichert werden. Für das Internet - wer wann welche IP-Adresse hatte bzw. Mails versandt oder empfangen hat - gelten Fristen zwischen einem halben bis einem Jahr.
Der Weg zur Datenspeicherpflicht wurde durch die Konvention des Europarats zur Bekämpfung von "Cybercrime" bereitet. Der Anstoß dazu wieder kam von den G7-Gipfeltreffen seit 1997, in diesen Gremien bestimmen die USA maßgeblich mit.
http://quintessenz.org/d/000100003796My rough translation of this:
Previously, long-term retention of personal data from telephone services and the internet was statutorily prohibited in the absence of a specific ground or circumstance (probable cause?) for the retention and the consent of the subject (the person owning the data). Now such retention will be mandatory across the European Union starting in 2007 through 2008. All information on traffic on digital telephone networks – who with whom, when, where telephone calls are made – must be retained for one to two years. As for Internet communications – who, when, what IP address and/or e-mails sent or received – must be retained from six months to a year.
The path to mandatory retention of data was established by the Europarat as a means to fight Cybercrime. The campaign to establish it arose out of the meeting of the G7 leaders, which is influenced to a great extent by the US, in 1997.
Here is an item on the website’s history.
Founded in summer 1994 quintessenz started as the first German language e-zine on the net that was published weekly. To name just two highlights of that time: In 1996 the publication of two internal OECD draft papers concerning the global future use of cryptography by quintessenz had some international repercussions. In cooperation with Telepolis we published the infamous ENFOPOL 98 paper on the net, an internal working plan by the EU Council for the future surveillance of all digital communication. Most of the editions 1994-1998 can be found in the public FTP archive of the Austrian National Library.
http://ezines.onb.ac.at:8080/quint /
After 9/11, terrorism was cited as the reason for instituting the broad-scale invasion of personal privacy. In 2002, a number of organizations including the ACLU wrote a letter to the president and all members of the European Parliament on this issue stating as follows:
We write to you and all the Members of the European Parliament on behalf of a wide range of civic organizations in the world concerning the upcoming vote on the proposed European Union Directive on the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector ("the proposed Directive") scheduled for 29 May. We urge you to vote against general and exploratory data retention of individuals' electronic communications by law enforcement authorities. We recommend that you vote in favour of the position on Article 15(1) of the European Parliament Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs (the "LIBE Committee"). We strongly recommend that you do not vote for any amendment on Article 15 that would leave EU Member States governments free to decide on the fundamental issue of data retention. With this collective statement, we want to underline the critical importance that this vote will have for democratic societies.
We believe that data retention of communications by law enforcement authorities should only be employed in exceptional cases. It should be authorised only by the judicial or other competent authorities on a case-by-case basis. When permitted, data retention must be a necessary, appropriate, proportionate and temporary measure, in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
We therefore strongly endorse the April 18, 2002 vote of the LIBE Committee on the Draft Recommendation for second reading ("the Committee's Draft Recommendation"). We particularly endorse language that promotes and preserves the most fundamental values democratic societies must defend: the right to privacy, freedom of expression, and presumption of innocence. We recommend opposing the language of the Council's common position of 28 January because it allows Member States to authorise general and exploratory electronic surveillance on a large scale. While the fight against terrorism is a legitimate purpose, we do not believe it can justify actions that undermine the most fundamental rights of democratic states.
http://www.gilc.org/cox_en.htmlMy second question:
The electronic eavesdropping law does not just invade the personal rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. In fact, it could be argued that it does not invade those. There can be no question, however, that it does violate the Sixth Amendment right of Americans to the Assistance of Counsel in criminal prosecutions. That is because it is essential to rendering assistance of counsel in a criminal case that the attorney be able to communicate with the client on the phone and via e-mail or a website. Further, an attorney has a duty of confidentiality to his or her clients. This includes clients who may be overseas and may be accused of crimes. The eavesdropping provision that Congress has passed would, it appears to me, permit the government, and in fact, specifically, the Justice Department, to eavesdrop on these confidential communications between lawyers and clients.
I am shocked that members of Congress would so readily surrender the protections guaranteed by the Constitution to criminal defendants. Criminal law is not the focus of my practice, however, I still have a duty of confidentiality to my clients. Shouldn't the government respect attorneys' ethical obligations? People have been prosecuted for violating the attorney client privilege by publishing a client's documents. This is a very serious violation of human rights. How can Congress ensure that the right to counsel in criminal cases will not be violated by the Justice Department?
We need to take our country back. I suspect that many right-wingers from whom we DUers feel alienated on other issues would agree that this invasion of our rights and liberties cannot be tolerated. Certainly those who are concerned about the right to own guns should be equally concerned about the right to organize and communicate without government intrusion. We need to realize that this is not an issue of the left or right, but an issue of fundamental freedom. And we need to observe carefully how each presidential candidate regardless of party stands on this issue.
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