Navy SEAL’s lawyers say military prosecutors spied by hiding tracking software in emails
SOC Eddie Gallagher
Attorney Timothy Parlatore, who represents the decorated Navy SEAL accused of killing an ISIS prisoner of war in Iraq, accuses military prosecutors of installing tracking software in emails in an attempt to identify media leaks on the case.
Edward Gallagher’s legal team caught on to the alleged scheme last week after they noticed an unusual logo of an American flag with a bald eagle perched on the scales of justice beneath the signature of a message sent to them by one of the prosecutors, according to the Associated Press. It was not an official government logo and the lawyers reportedly found suspicious tracking software embedded inside it.
The emails were sent last Wednesday to 13 lawyers and paralegals on their team — and to Carl Prine, a reporter for the Navy Times newspaper, who has broken several stories about the case based on documents provided by sources.
While documents are subject to a court order not to be shared, none has been classified, Prine told the AP. The defense attorneys say the intrusion may have violated constitutional protections against illegal searches, guarantees to the right to a lawyer and freedom of the press.
The wife of the Navy SEAL accused of killing an injured ISIS prisoner of war in Iraq tells Fox News that someone is going to have to “start investigating these investigators” after his lawyers claimed military prosecutors were spying on them through tracking software hidden inside emails.
Andrea Gallagher’s comments on ‘Fox & Friends’ Tuesday came a day after Edward Gallagher’s legal team revealed the extent of what they believe is an apparent attempt by the prosecution to find out who is leaking information to the media about the case.
If true, this is a pretty egregious violation of Constitutional Rights, but if I were a high powered attorney I’d sure as the sun sets encrypt my freaking e-mail. It can be done in MS Outlook- go to tools, select E-Mail Security, and follow the bouncing ball. Or spend some green and buy one of any number of encryption software programs out there. Try Major Geeks.com for recommendations.
Hat tip to ChipNASA for the Fox News Link
And my reference Another Fox News Link.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Guest Link, Iraq, Legal, Navy, Veterans in the news
It gets worse.
“Navy prosecutor Cmdr. Christopher Czaplak admits in court he illegally spied on SEAL lawyers and media, defense says”
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/05/navy-prosecutor-admits-in-court-he-illegally-spied-on-seal-lawyers-and-media-defense-says/?fbclid=IwAR3vKJvwnpSHZHWrjYmtw6rXQxWKLKNKscdhRfvAYT4bYfyvWUA5GAt9bhE
And now the Defense is asking for a pause and probably requesting a mistrial
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/05/16/defense-seeks-pause-in-navy-seal-case-while-probing-spying/
WTF. YOU CAN’T DO THAT SHIT!! (Embed spying software on e-mails, JESUS!)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/defense-seeks-pause-in-navy-seal-case-while-probing-spying/2019/05/15/071d31f0-777a-11e9-a7bf-c8a43b84ee31_story.html?utm_term=.d2d4dd775446
If I was that defense attorney, I would be moving for sanctions against the prosecutors, moving to have them disqualified from the case and reporting them to whatever bar association licensed them. This is beyond highly unethical and is criminal in many jurisdictions. It is a clear invasion of the attorney client privilege if the email bug operates against any emails between defense members and/or the client.
You’re too easy. I’d sue the living daylights out of them, get them disbarred, period, and make sure that everyone knows what scumbags they are.
This would make a great movie – all the secret squirrel stuff going on behind the scenes – secret meetings, lots of hands shaking other hands, ego mania slapping itself on the back – that sort of thing. And then, before the end, the Big Reveal, that these lawer operated on the same level of scumbaggery as a dead former pilot who pretended to be a lawer.
(Misspellings are intentional.)
I vote for all of the above. This is just insane.
I was all ready to say this is probably some persecution complex on the part of the defense team, but it’s real? How the fuck did they think they were going to get away with this? And on a case that has the attenton of a lot of people, including POTUS! Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Unfucking believable… judicial misconduct is probably the lease of the prosecutor’s and judge’s concern. I’d love to know who’s calling the shots in this mess…
The people calling the
shots are likely the same careerists who loved the 0bama and Clinton regimes.
military lawyers must watch too much of those idiotic tv shows like JAG or the new one–the code.
In my experience, without exception, uniformed lawyers in all branches are insufferable asses and inevitably incompetent.
Sitting through an actual GCM as a panel member is instructive. After a year of sitting panels at Fort Hood, I’m surprised the military ever wins a case…if the soldiers weren’t making it so easy with their stupidity there would be no convictions at all.
“In my experience, without exception, uniformed lawyers in all branches are insufferable asses and inevitably incompetent.”
“…if the soldiers weren’t making it so easy with their stupidity there would be no convictions at all.”
I CONCUR!!!
Rookie mistake. And not the first time for DoD lawyers.
Navy “justice” kinda looks like Army “justice”.
Dicks.
And btws Commander Caplatzziz (wtf is THAT?!), I heard pissing off the SOC community is a great way to shorten your terrestrial TOD. Jus’sayin.
Makes you wonder if the guys and gals of the Jag corps, are in to truly serve, or to just do their time and get their law school loans paid.
Gee, I knew that lawyers can be weasels, but those are the ones that give the rest a bad name.
the problem with lawyers is that 99% of them give the rest a bad reputation…
I guess Abby and Gibbs screwed up this time, I wonder if Harm will be able to close the case before the hour is up?
Don’t blame them, blame the JAG Off’s that screwed up their part of the case.
Shades of 8 Dec 2018. Looks like Navy gonna lose again.
Dumbass!
Go Army, because the Navy is being dumb and beating themselves again….
I’m not privy to non-public details of the case, but I’m highly suspicious of the claims there was ‘sophisticated spyware’ embedded in the image. Rather, it seems it was a simple tracking image – used by countless companies, and annoying, but not sophisticated in the least.
The way this stuff works is a message embeds a remote image, and thus when someone receives it, and opts to display all images (whether this is an option or not depends on the email client), and if so, a connection is made to the remote server to get the image. That connection logs the time and IP address of the client, giving some tracking info.
If you send an e-mail to two people they aren’t supposed to forward to others, and you get three unique IPs accessing the image, you have some useful information. You can often backtrack where those IPs originate too. And you know when people saw the message. But there’s no ‘hacking’ or sophisticated virus placed on a target machine.
That doesn’t make it right to use (or necessarily wrong – I have no idea about the legal ethics here), but it’s not like the prosecution had access to defense files or something.
Just my two cents.
I suspect that the folks on this thread who practiced law would consider such actions blatant violation of attorney-client privilege, sophisticated or not.
An attorney can utilize outside counsel. My understanding is that communication is also privileged.
I suspect that whoever did the deed is facing some very serious consequences.
It was also stupid in the extreme. Prosecutors should not gratuitously feed into the cycle of “Deny everything. Admit nothing. Make counter-accusations. Never change your story.”
Feeding the counter-accusations step via damfool clumsy tradecraft is evidence of incompetence.
Actually, this is so stupidly clumsy that I have to consider it was meant as either paranoia-inducement or distraction from better efforts.
As a non-practicing attorney I would have to concur with this.
In some respects this is similar to conflict-of-interest issues where even the APPEARANCE of a conflict (without an actual conflict) is enough to draw sanctions.
Attorney/client communications are one of the most protected of privileges in our legal system so anything that even APPEARS to compromise that privilege ought to be of great concern to the court.
Enough for a mistrial? Probably not but there’s no telling what a judge might say.
It is a “blatant violation of the attorney-client privilege.” And you are correct that the privilege extends to communications between and among all the defense attorneys representing the clients/defendants. This also includes expert witnesses hired by the defense. And the reason I know is because I had to research the issue for one of my cases where there were multiple defendants with individual counsel but working on common defenses. In the jurisdictions where I practiced law, both state and federal, an honest judge would find such conduct grounds for severe sanctions and referral of the offending attorneys to the attorney bar associations licensing those attorneys. I watched it happen in a case where the judge decided three of the defense attorneys gave false testimony in a hearing on a discovery dispute over a document production. All three attorneys were sanctioned by the state bar.
Spying on opposing counsel’s privileged communications is clearly unethical and likely criminal; it may constitute federal wire fraud.
Yeah, it’s the whole reason most email systems don’t show images by default, or make users trust senders before showing them. We all probably get at least a dozen of these a day between all of our various email accounts. It’s a good way to tell that a bulk email list is healthy, for example. Same with including email-specific coupons or hyperlinks.
Maybe it’s not cool to do this in the legal world, but I’m seeing more molehill than mountain in these claims. It’s the user and their own email client that make the request out–so that’s where the complaint goes, IMO.
Must have picked up some of the dirty tricks from the FBI and the DOJ
With Thunderbird you can block remote content.
I do it by default.
Years ago I got to reading the Richard Marcinko story and his books afterwards, I wonder what he thinks about this?
I am sure he would tell you that these Navy prosecutors are just as ruthless and unethical as the DOJ/FBI Deep Staters who have covered for Clinton and carried out the Russia hoax against the President and his team.
For those unfamiliar with his story, Marcinko was prosecuted on trumped up charges by the Navy to get rid of him because his Red Cell team made a number of admirals look incompetent security-wise. When his SEALs captured one of our nuclear subs, it was the final straw. They also circumvented security and captured Air Force One at Pt. Magu NAS.
For that episode it should be renamed Pt. Magoo…