Andrew Napolitano on New Assaults on American Law
Edward Snowden may have revealed the nature and extent of the spying that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been perpetrating on Americans, but some of the NSA's most troublesome behavior has yet to become a part of the public debate. Andrew P. Napolitano explores these new assaults on the American legal system, including the erosion of attorney-client privilege. If you have spoken to a lawyer recently and if that lawyer is dealing with the federal government on your behalf, you can thank President Barack Obama for destroying the formerly privileged nature of your conversations, Napolitano writes.
But that is not the only legal protection that's being destroyed. Last week, in a case in federal court in Oregon, the same Justice Department that told the highest court in the land last year that it would dutifully and truthfully reveal its sources of evidence—as case law requires even when the source is an NSA wiretap—told a federal district court judge that it had no need or intention of doing so. If this practice of using NSA wiretaps as the original source of evidence in criminal cases and keeping that information from the defendants against whom it is used is permitted, we will have yet another loss of liberty.
