The tension between privacy and security seems to be escalating by the minute. (It certainly was front-and-center at LegalTech New York.) Saturday, The New York Times reported that another top-secret document, obtained by former National Security Agency consultant Edward Snowden, “shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States.”
“The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance in which Americans were ensnared by the eavesdroppers, and is of particular interest because lawyers in the United States with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance,” wrote James Risen and Laura Poitras. Speculation is that the affected firm is Chicago-based Mayer Brown, which represented the Indonesian government, they reported.
