Prison Phone Hack Reveals Mass Violation of Attorney-Client Privilege

An anonymous hacker has released the recordings of more than 70 million prison phone calls, and has revealed what “may be the most massive breach of the attorney-client privilege in modern U.S. history,” according to David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. The calls, placed in at least 37 states between December 2011 and spring of 2014, include at least 14,000 recorded conversations between inmates and attorneys—calls which never should have been recorded in the first place. The hacker sought to draw attention to security lapses by Securus, a leading provider of phone services inside the nation’s prisons and jails.