Priveliged confidentiality?Follow

Question I don't know the answer to, and am too lazy to look up:

Would his conversation with his attorney, or barrister or Runpoke or whatever the hell you limey ******* call lawyers these days have been privileged and not subject to recording?

I didn't select an answer because none of them "fit" IMO. The decision and legality of conducting a tap should not rest based on the individual(s) being tapped, but where the tap is occurring and whatever applicable restrictions/laws apply to that situation.

If a normal person has a legal expectation of privacy in that situation (ie: someone who is not their retained lawyer having a conversation with them in a public area of the prison), then it should be illegal and folks should be outraged. But not because the other person in the conversation was an MP. IMO, that's an irrelevant consideration.

I don't know the specifics of wiretapping laws in the UK, but if it's legal for them to tap this guy in that location at that time if he were having a conversation with any other person not bound by some kind of confidentiality clause, then I don't see the problem. It's not like the objective of this tap was to listen in on the MP, but to see if the suspect said anything that might be important in terms of his illegal activities. I just don't see under what possible argument one could claim that a conversation with a constituent in jail is "privileged"...

Nobby you and Kao went to the same school apparently:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/priveliged

Nothing that has been said so far makes me think that the bug was for that particular conversation more that the bug was in place to record the suspects conversations period and it just happens that one of them involved an MP.

I trust Politicians as far as i could throw a Blue Whale and i think ALL thier conversations should be recorded so that we can play it back to them when they are caught lying time and time again.

Well, you've kind of answered your own question. Because some people (MPs, mostly) claim that there is such a confidentiality between MPs and their constituent.

I think the reason why this became news is that MPs are not used to being bugged themselves. Well, that and the fact that the government has ordered an enquiry into the matter, which will take officially 3 weeks, so 6 in reality, by which time no one will care about this story anymore.

But relationships between doctors, lawyers, therapists, priests and even between spouses are privileged, so I'm not sure what your point is here.

And, I think there is an advantage of privileged communication--it can be a free speech issue, i.e. a voter's right to communicate with their elected official without being scrutinized by intelligence agencies. It's interesting because in our context, we might think that elected officials are liars or we need to be secure because of terrorism--and therefore it needs to be bugged. But what about times when the government is violating people's rights and we communicate to our elected officials, which is their role, to represent our interests? What would it be like during any period of excessive scrutiny to feel as if you cannot communicate with an elected official without the oversight of government intelligence agencies? I think it would inhibit free expression and the ability of constituents to communicate with their official.

The problems with government corruption itself is a bigger and somewhat different issue.

Within the current political environment, to have a Muslim MP bugged because of a fear of terrorist activity seems to be the most hamhanded example of racial profiling. It sends out the message that even if a Muslim is a British elected official, they are suspect and their communication is suspect--it's less to do with the prisoner than the treatment of the official. Why didn't they inform this MP upfront? Why didn't they work in collaboration with him?

And I freely stated that I don't know the exact particulars of the law in question, but I don't think "MPs can't be tapped when talking to constituents under any circumstances" is a legitimate legal reason. If the law actually says that then it's a crappy law and should be tossed out. No one should be exempt from the law.

Well, first off there's not a whole lot of ambiguity in the statement "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".


Secondly, it's not actually a law. It was not passed via legislative process. It's called the "Wilson Doctrine". Look it up if you wish. It's kinda like an executive order. Thus, it never "passed". However, each successive Prime Minister since then has repeated the promise not to bug members of Parliament.


Thirdly, the Wilson Doctrine specifically promises not to bug their phones (specifically phones owned by members of Parliament and those used by them as part of their duties). It says absolutely nothing about bugging a table in a public place in order to listen to a conversation with a prisoner that a member of Parliament happens to be talking to at the time. I'm quite sure that the original intent of the doctrine was not to protect such conversations, but to prevent the bugging of phones used for Parliament business.


So I was wrong. It's not a crappy law because it's not a law at all. And this event doesn't even violate the doctrine either. Sounds to me like the media playing on the fact the MP is Muslim to generate a bigger story while conveniently leaving specific details out. Shocker! I know...

What constitutes infringement is what is ambiguous--like what would infringe on the right to speak to representatives is or infringing on the right to bare arms. Jesus.

Which is pretty clearly the objective IMO. I don't think it's a coincidence that every single article I've read regarding this always phrases the bugging as "bugging the MPs conversations with...", wheras the presumed reality was that they bugged "the prisoners conversation with...".


Reversing the order of the statement does have a huge impact on the readers perception of the event. It makes it seem as though the MP was the target of the bugging and not the guy in prison. So yeah. Media spinning this like mad to sell copy IMO.

Edited, Feb 5th 2008 11:52am by gbaji

Yeah, you need a court order authorising it. Not sure how wide the remit is, though.



Who's objective exactly? Surely not the liberal media...