[saraid216]

Why would the not-an-American-citizen lawyer speaking to a not-an-American-citizen have attorney-client privilege from the perspective of an American governmental organization?

Edited to add: It's remarkably difficult to quickly find information about attorney-client privilege in settings other than US, UK, Canada, and Australia. I found a brief mention that the privilege does not apply to in-house counsel in the EU, and that Brazil breaches it with a court order, but that's all. I'd hope I could find more given some more time, but I need to get back to work.

[andrewcooke]

common decency? human rights?

[when americans visit other countries, do you expect to not have any rights here? to be treated to different laws from the locals? to not be able to talk privately with your lawyers? what do you think the rest of us are like? as bad as you?]

[jacquesm]

Because it says 'attorney-client privilege' and not 'American attorney-American client privilege'.

[XorNot]

And it's clearly impossible that this is simply shorthand for the most common situation Americans or citizens of a given nation that enforce it are likely to encounter.

No, clearly 3 words are supposed to accurately summarize an entire area of rights and law!

[Dylan16807]

Don't be an ass.

[jlgreco]

Because we expect our government to act ethically, not merely within the confines of the law?

[tropicalmug]

You're correct, it wouldn't apply. My naïveté had me a little carried away.

[anaptdemise]

Ha. Also, what kind of attorney would have the kind of conversation covered under attorney client privileges on Facebook, PM or otherwise?

[nullc]

The same kind that run third party provided spyware on their personal computers in order to take exams in law school.

(In other words: Practically all newly minted attorneys in the US)

There is no education in law school in the US at least on responsible data handling, and— in fact— schools often direct students to behave irresponsibly with respect to data security.

[andreyf]

The same kind that run third party provided spyware on their personal computers in order to take exams in law school.

Do you have a specific case in mind?

schools often direct students to behave irresponsibly with respect to data security

Why would they do that? Reference?

[nullc]

Sure, the practice is ubiquitous

Example software and policies are things like:

http://www.exam4.com/ (used by Harvard, George Washington, etc)

http://www.law.wisc.edu/help/for_students/securexam/

http://www.law.columbia.edu/academics/registrar/Laptop_Exams

https://www.law.umich.edu/currentstudents/registration/exams...

Most (all?) schools offer students the ability to take their exams on paper, but doing so is a substantial competitive disadvantage because examinations are usually timed and writing on paper is much slower, students are marked down for legibility and copy-editing noise, etc.

I don't have a citation studying it— but by all appearances it's only a small minority of students that opt out of using their laptops. ("Most Stanford Law School students take their examinations on laptops")

IIRC the California bar exam now also uses one of these spyware exam packages.

I'm mostly amused that we have a whole information-security critical profession who is nearly required to behave negligently wrt information security from day one. :P

[andreyf]

Wow, no kidding. Why the heck could it need "Administrator level account permissions" (both on OSX and Windows [1])? I guess you could run it in a VM and wipe it afterwards.

1. https://www.examsoft.com/dotnet/Default.aspx?f=mtlaw

[nullc]

You're prohibited from running it in a VM, and at least some law schools have the students sign some form under penalty of the school ethical code yadda yadda that you won't do that.

(And then— some students do it anyways, because thats the only way to use it on their otherwise non-supported system or because of some other incompatibility. And nothing comes of it... I guess until something does. Better not make too many enemies)

[jlgreco]

So how long will it take them to realize that people have more than one computer?

[bananitaswokwok]

One that lives in the year 2013?

Which communication channels are supposed to be under attorney client privileges, then? I didn't know there was a list.

[anaptdemise]

I do not argue that it should be covered. Just that it is irresponsible. I would argue that GMail accounts are as well.

"Picture this, man convicted of murder after subpoena to online marketing date reveals targeted ads for icotoners and shovels after GMail exchange with lawyer."

It's a stretch of the imagination but we live in a crazy world.

[vidarh]

You're implying he had a choice. The article implies that Facebook was his only means of contacting the client, and that situation was presumably his clients choice.