@ Mike
Isn't it illegal to bug a lawyer client conversation?
By your reasoning the buggers are now criminals, and should not have any human rights extended to them. Soon there won't be anyone left :)
I think you misunderstand what the legal system is about - it is there to maintain the status quo, protecting the innocent is just the PR angle. Very rarely does it actually protect the innocent, instead it punishes the guilty after the innocent has been compromised, there is very little protection going on.
All it does is herd people into a small space, and denies them rights, if it can be shown that the rights of others have been infringed. But guess what, all of our most fundamental rights have all been abused since birth, it is impossible to be innocent in today's society. We all take from each other, we are not really that symbiotic we are far more parasitic to each other. May it be marking on the curve, or competing for land, we abuse each other's rights left, right and center.
The lawyer client confidentiality right, is there to ensure a glimmer of fairness in what is a corrupt system. By committing the crime of willfully breaking that confidentiality the victims are not just the direct victims, but all of us in society. I hope that the people responsible for the bugging are all sought out, brought to justice and not let out for a very long time, so they won't be bugging us for the foreseeable future.
And people should be held personally accountable for it, no hiding behind public groups where a fine would be met by the tax payer, liability should extend to them personally with their own possessions and rights on the line not ours.
If a conviction was secured on information that formed part of the lawyer client privilege then the conviction has to be over turned as it is unsound by definition. If you are under the impression that whatever you tell a certain party is to remain confidential and is secured by the system itself as being confidential, then a breakdown there means you have not had a fair trial, you are in the eyes of the law innocent. The problem is people bargain in the legal system - it is not about truth, it is what can be demonstrated and believed as truth. Insider information can do more to taint the truth than it can to bolster it, depending upon how that illicit information is wielded.
If you wish to prove a person is guilty of a crime then you require evidence and the way that evidence is obtained has to be beyond dispute, see torture and tricks all bring the evidence into disrepute, if someone is guilty then you have to prove they are so, if you cannot and still punish you are just as guilty as the person who did actually commit the crime, with the addition of the crimes you committed along the way to secure an unfair conviction.