Federal prosecutors in New York are using a legal loophole to read jailhouse emails between defendants and their lawyers, Stephanie Clifford revealed in the New York Times, yesterday. Inmates have the right to send confidential snail-mail to their lawyers under the ancient principle of attorney-client privilege, but all electronic communications from jail are monitored. In order to use the email system, the inmate must consent to monitoring. Those messages sometimes show up in court as evidence against the defendent. 

The Editorial Board of the New York Times assailed this email monitoring as an affront to attorney-client privilege, “one of the oldest, broadest, and most important privileges” in the American legal system.