Fergie's Tech Blog

Vermont Attorneys Accuse Feds of Tapping Phone, Hacking

Allan Holmes writes on GovExec's Tech Insider:

This news item certainly will heap more suspicion on the Bush administration’s tactics for fighting terrorism.

A law firm in Vermont, which represents a client in Afghanistan and a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, is accusing the federal government of tapping its phones and hacking into a computer used by one of the firm's partners, according to an article posted by the Burlington Free Press. Three partners in the law firm Gensburg, Atwell & Broderick recently sent a letter to clients telling them the firm "can't guarantee their communications were confidential," according to the article. The firm said it had found its phone lines crossed and that a computer forensic examination of the computer used by Robert Gensburg "found an application that disabled all security software and would have given someone access to all information on the computer," according to the article.

Gensberg said there may be an innocent explanation for the problems -- such as he may have accidentally downloaded some malware from the Internet -- but "we are quite confident that it is the United States government that has been doing the phone tapping and computer hacking," the lawyers wrote in their Oct. 2 letter to clients.

posted by Fergie @ 10/12/2007 12:09:00 PM