Prison phone company recorded private lawyer-inmate calls, hack reveals

The company markets itself to government clients as able to provide a superior phone system – its Secure Call Platform – that allows for broad monitoring and recording of calls.

An anonymous hacker has released records of 70 million phone calls by inmates in U.S. jails to the press – and it suggests that attorney-client privilege has been routinely violated on a huge scale. Today, company that handles prison phone calls claims the leak was inside job and not the result of an outside hacker. This is, The Intercept says, “a strong indication that at least a few of the recordings are likely confidential and privileged legal communications – calls that never should have been recorded in the first place”. “There’s constitutional protections that assure that you can have effective assistance of counsel and recording those calls breaches that”.

David Fathi, a director at the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Intercept the recording of a few of the phone calls “may be the most massive breach of the attorney-client privilege in modern USA history, and that’s certainly something to be concerned about”.

A massive computer hack of prison phone records has revealed inmates across the country have had their calls with attorneys recorded, potentially violating their legal and constitutional rights. “Then [Wednesday] night, after the story came out, they issued a brief statement saying not only that they don’t believe that they were hacked, they believe that there was somebody who had access and downloaded these calls”.

Smith said she could not comment on Securus’ rebuttal to her article at this time.

Securus is now working with law enforcement to investigate the breach. “Instead, at this preliminary stage, evidence suggests that an individual or individuals with authorized access to a limited set of records may have used that access to inappropriately share those records”. “It is very important to note that we have found absolutely no evidence of attorney-client calls that were recorded without the knowledge and consent of those parties”, Securus added.

The company said that its systems have multiple safeguards to ensure private communication between inmates and lawyers is not recorded.

The suit alleges that Travis county authorities and Securus management have known about the recording practices since early 2013, “but they did nothing to fix it”. “Those attorneys who did not register their numbers would also hear a warning about recording prior to the beginning of each call, requiring active acceptance”. “It’s kind of morphed into a “collect everything” situation, where they also do now sell that information…to law enforcement across jurisdictions saying ‘Hey, this can probably help you in your investigation'”.

“Of course the problem we have here is how the data was compromised”, said Mark James, Security Specialist at IT Security Firm, ESET.

According to The Intercept, the data breach includes calls placed between December 2011 and spring 2014 and proves the company has failed to measure up to its own promises on security. “Some data needs to be protected differently than others, the data is now “in the wild” and nothing can be done about that”.