{"id":141607,"date":"2014-11-06T20:19:07","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T20:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=141607"},"modified":"2014-11-06T20:20:16","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T20:20:16","slug":"intelligence-agencies-target-exploit-legally-privileged-communications-tribunal-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/intelligence-agencies-target-exploit-legally-privileged-communications-tribunal-hears\/","title":{"rendered":"Intelligence agencies target and exploit legally privileged communications, tribunal hears"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Warren, Melanie Newman<\/em><\/p>\n

Intelligence agencies are intercepting\u00a0privileged communications and have inadequate\u00a0barriers in place to stop them being used in criminal and civil trials, a tribunal has heard.<\/p>\n

Newly released policy documents have revealed\u00a0\u201cunlawful and unethical\u201d practices at\u00a0MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which oversees the agencies, was told today.<\/p>\n

Lawyers and privacy campaigners say the policies call into question the integrity of\u00a0judgements in\u00a0a large number of criminal and civil cases.<\/p>\n

And Conservative MP and civil liberties champion David Davis has described\u00a0the revelations as a national scandal in the making.<\/p>\n

Communications between individuals and their lawyers are subject to \u201clegal professional privilege\u201d which means they are recognised as private in law.<\/p>\n

Now,\u00a0policy documents released in response to a legal claim brought by Libyan politicians and human rights groups, show that:<\/p>\n

*Intelligence agencies are permitted to\u00a0deliberately target legally privileged material, with MI5 saying this may then\u00a0be \u201cused\u00a0just like any other item of intelligence\u201d;<\/p>\n

*There is currently nothing\u00a0to prevent\u00a0the involvement in litigation of security service\u00a0lawyers who have\u00a0previously viewed\u00a0relevant privileged material;<\/p>\n

*MI5\u00a0abandoned a \u201cChinese wall\u201d meant to stop\u00a0abuse\u00a0of intercepted communications between lawyers and clients in 2011 because\u00a0it had too few in-house lawyers to make the system\u00a0work;<\/p>\n

*The Security Service\u2019s policy is not to\u00a0disclose the fact it has looked at privileged material to the court\u00a0or\u00a0the defendant in hearings it is involved in.<\/p>\n

Belhaj and ors v MI5, MI6, GCHQ and ors<\/strong><\/p>\n

The government has admitted to a single\u00a0instance of\u00a0\u201cpotential for tainting\u201d of litigation resulting from the interception of\u00a0privileged correspondence\u00a0and\u00a0says it took steps to rectify this.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s IPT case\u00a0is being\u00a0brought by Libyans who allege the UK was complicit in their kidnapping and rendition back to Gadaffi\u2019s Libya, where they were tortured.<\/p>\n

Abdul-Hakim Belhaj and others\u00a0believe that intelligence agencies involved in defending their claims for compensation may have intercepted and used their\u00a0communications with lawyers.<\/p>\n

At today\u2019s hearing, counsel\u00a0for the Libyan families\u00a0suggested\u00a0that MI5\u00a0had only established a Chinese wall\u00a0in 2014 after the families had obtained undertakings from the government to protect their\u00a0privileged material more effectively.<\/p>\n

The 28 documents released to them so far are not copies of original documents, but are retyped and in some cases, summarised, passages.<\/p>\n

The Libyans are pushing for redacted copies of the originals and for\u00a0disclosure of further information, such as details of\u00a0instances when material has been collected in contravention of the law.<\/p>\n

Dinah Rose QC, who is acting for Belhaj, told the IPT the case was the tip of the iceberg and that the disclosed policies \u201craise a strong prima facie cases that there has been an abuse of process and that real injustices may have been done.\u201d<\/p>\n

The policies \u201con the face of it, appear to permit lawyers to be involved in practices that are unlawful and unethical,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The intelligence services are involved in a range of court cases, from civil and criminal proceedings to secret immigration hearings and security vetting appeals.<\/p>\n

If the IPT rules that their interception of legal communications is unlawful, people who have lost cases in which the intelligence services have been involved could\u00a0apply for the judgment to be dismissed as an abuse of process.<\/p>\n

Speaking outside the tribunal, David Davis said: \u201cThis has the makings of a national scandal. It seems that it is not uncommon that lawyer-client privilege is broken, which is a fundamental piece of our rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cori Crider, a director at legal charity Reprieve and US counsel for Belhaj, said: \u201cThe documents clearly show that MI5\u2019s and GCHQ\u2019s policies on snooping on lawyers have major loopholes.\u201d<\/p>\n

She asked: \u201cIn how many cases has the Government eavesdropped to give itself an unfair advantage in court?\u201d<\/p>\n

Bureau interception case<\/strong><\/p>\n

The hearing at the IPT is one of several ongoing legal actions involving state surveillance following the Snowden disclosures.<\/p>\n

The Bureau is currently bringing a case to the European Court of Human Rights in which it is asking the court to rule whether the UK provides adequate legal protection for journalists communications.<\/p>\n

Of particular concern is the issue of whether journalists\u2019 communications with their sources are being intercepted, which could be unlawful under European human rights laws.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Warren, Melanie Newman Intelligence agencies are intercepting\u00a0privileged communications and have inadequate\u00a0barriers in place to stop them being used in criminal and civil trials, a tribunal has heard. Newly released policy documents have revealed\u00a0\u201cunlawful and unethical\u201d practices at\u00a0MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which oversees the agencies, was told today. Lawyers and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-141607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}