MI5 and GCHQ documents allow spying on lawyers

Top secret guidelines setting out how the security services have been instructed to spy on communications between lawyers and the clients have been published for the first time.

Extracts of documents from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ were released as part of a legal action brought by lawyers from the campaigning charity Reprieve on behalf of two Libyan men.

The papers, disclosed in a tribunal case, are controversial because communications between lawyers and their clients are covered by “legal professional privilege”, or LPP, meaning that law enforcement agencies are supposed to respect their privacy.

But the guidelines indicate the security services have been targeting such communications – by interception methods thought to include telephone taps and e-mail surveillance – since at last October 2002.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11213755/MI5-and-GCHQ-documents-allow-spying-on-lawyers.html