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The Justice Department has decided to listen in on the conversations of lawyers with clients in federal custody, including people who have been detained but not charged with any crime, whenever that is deemed necessary to prevent violence or terrorism.--CNN 11/9/01
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Check this news out. They just decided to do it, and started doing it. If the terrorists do bring us down, this is how they'll do it: indirectly, by making people so afraid that we allow our most basic rights and freedoms to be eliminated, and then the America they hate so much will not exist anymore.

I want the bastards brought to justice as much as anyone, but not by losing the essence of what America is. Damn.

that is bad news, Ceashell, my hope is that ashcroft & W get skewered, about this at their next press conference & that the ACLU jumps on it, w/ both feet.
You are quite right, this is a real, "self-inflicted" wound

I guess we'll have to put on our marching shoes again. This on top of this national ID idea that's being promoted. It's scary. Very scary. And very unAmerican. By the time this mess is over, there won't be any freedoms left to fight for.

oh, that's just bad..very bad policy. attorney/client privilege is just too basic of a right to give up..no matter what.

<FONT size="6"><center><FONT COLOR="red">1984</FONTc></center></FONT s>

Thats what you get when you get a TexAss Gov to be Prez <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/dizzy.gif" width=15 height=15>

Doh
Homer J

My apology to all. Of course it wasn't CNN. It was the Washington Post. I posted before the 1st bag of coffee dripped into my veins. What was I thinking? I went to cnn just now and couldn't find anything about it, went to Washpost and there it was. Here's the full article: it gets scarier the more you read, but also notes that several groups are jumping on it big-time, including ACLU <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/angel.gif" width=25 height=20> and a national trial lawyers group.


http://www.msnbc.com/news/655112.asp

Oh, HomerJ, you have NO IDEA how embarassed we are that the first appointed president is able to say he's from here. You can imagine how scared we were last year. We Texans who knew tried to warn the rest of the country; we'd already had him as our gov. and a big baseball club owner, and that was bad enough! And now he gets this plum of a war (from his perspective) thrown in his lap, and possibly the opportunity to reshape our country to his liking. It's probably as much fun as some of the old frat parties were.

I imagine our old files in Quantico are being reopened, and all this blundertalk will be added. Long as I don't lose my pension...<img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>

At the risk of continuing to sound a lot more conservative than I am..this isn't as radical as it sounds. It would be, if September 11 hadn't happened, and it is, if you don't believe there are further similar acts planned. I don't know if there are, but this makes me believe that the government truly does.

First of all, it was always possible to do it with a court order. The lawyer and client have to be notified. Obviously, if they're notified, no good information will be forthcoming. The only real reason for this is to prevent the attorney, either knowingly or unknowingly, to facilite communication between terrorists who may be planning further acts. Then there's the off chance that an alleged terrorist might be dumb enough to go ahead and ask the lawyer to convey an innocent sounding message and that might give them a lead which could result in preventing an event from happening. They're not fishing for evidence. It would be difficult to get any and even more difficult to get it allowed in court. This doesn't automatically make any information gathered admissible evidence.

This might sound far-fetched, but I could tell you a story about a left leaning lawyer who left a case because "you had to be a bit of a terrorist" to be among the lawyers on the case - in other words, you had to be willing to be a party to exactly what the government is saying could be happening. It's the truth. So, what's right in this new and weirdass situation is hard to say sometimes. It doesn't mean I don't find it all very scary. I do.

in light of what you're saying, pat..i went back and reread the article. if i'm reading it correctly, they still have to notify the client and attorney, just don't need to get the court order to do so. although, i'm still not sure i like this, i think you've made some valid points, and i do believe that some further acts are probably planned...so i guess i need to think on this some more.

the world is getting scarier every day. and while i never particular felt as far left as some i never really considered myself a conversative either.

and from what i heard the government would not be able to use any information they get in court. but i'm not sure that really makes me feel any better about it. i mean, right now its kind of easy to say...go team go...but then again i think its awfully hard to get civil liberties back once you've given them up.

That's true, fitzy, about not being so easy to get civil liberties back, plus there's really no time frame on this. There will always be terrorism. It's just that it's not as legally significant as it sounds, given that it's just a matter of not needing to get a court order for it. It puts the shoe on the other foot, to be sure, though. Now the lawyer has the right to get a court order to prevent it from happening, but of course now it's the defense that has to show cause. But whether it really screws with civil liberties really seems to depend on how courts view information received this way. As long as the courts don't go around upholding evidence as admissible except under the most extreme of circumstances, it'll never be useful as an investigatory tool. The big problem and challenge is that our criminal justice system is not set up to prevent things from happening, except by the deterrent of potential punishment. When that is neutralized by people who are willing to die, much less do time, it stands everything on its head.

I think you've hit on what makes this so unique, Pat...the willingness of terroirists to die..it takes the ultimate punishment, off the table, as a potential deterrent. If the issue is the gov't needing to prevent the passing of info among detainees, it seems that could be done, without obliterating attorney/client priviledge.
and, that same approach has been taken, toward prosecuting the war in afghan. The defense dept says what they intend to do, then, slowly attempts to do it in a clumbsy, disorganized way, with no clear "end game strategy"
Bin Laden need only spin the propaganda, to describe all "coalition" actions as part of a modern day "Crusade" thus keeping all Muslim radicals whipped into a frenzy
W's goal is to "wipe out terrorism" so, Bin Laden counters, with propaganda to perpetuate
the formation and commitment of human "Jihad machines" who may continue to operate, long after Bin Laden is dead.
it looks likes a hard rain, this winter...
"where are you goin, my blue-eyed son?
and what'll ya do now, my darlin young one?
I'm a goin back out, 'for the rain starts a fallin..."
B Dylan

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bumper:

If the issue is the gov't needing to prevent the passing of info among detainees, it seems that could be done, without obliterating attorney/client priviledge.
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I do believe that's the real issue, although I think that it would sound lame to me if I hadn't been made aware that that does indeed happen, and how it happens. I don't think that you can accomplish that goal without infringing on some rights. Another approach might be to take it the other way around and look at just who is allowed to defend people in cases like this - and that could infringe on much more basic and maybe more important rights. In sorting out how you feel about this and other things like it, what each person has to decide is, without really being able to assess the risk of allowing such communications, which negative weighs more heavily - giving up some security or some civil liberties, because one or the other will suffer a little.

A lot of people have quoted Ben Franklin on the liberty vs security thing, but I think that's really specious unless you're really a libertarian, because we make compromises and adjust the balance on that all the time. It's like the joke about would you sleep with someone for a million dollars, or for world peace, or end to disease, and if the answer is yes, would you do it for two dollars? We're not pure - the rest is just negotiation. The current awakening to the reality of now just serves to tell us it's time to grow up and face the fact that there's no perfect answer, whichever side of each issue you come down on and someone is liable to pay an unfair and unjust price for each decision that's made, either way.

The real harm here is somewhat like the Planned Parenthood case, protestors were required to stay so far back from those ladies going in for treatments, Bush took the law and applied it to all protestors and then extended the "protestor free zone" to keep all protestor far away from him, I think the "protestor free zone" extended about five miles, so needless to say, this stops protests without violating free speach.

Always in Civil Rights cases, we must see the entire ice berg and just how many freedoms it will sink, I can assure you this is only the tip.

George Bush has also altered the law to prevent the release of any President's papers and will not allow and freedom of information act to require or permit any releases of his or his father's, or even Regan's Papers, I first truly secret president, wonder what it is he has to hide?