Hijacking the Privilege: Balancing Fairness and Security When Warrantless Wiretapping Threatens Attorney-Client Communications

by William Wetmore

Shakir Baloch is a family doctor with a wife and a fifteen-year-old daughter. A native of Pakistan from a politically prominent family that supports progressive secularism in that country, Baloch moved to Canada in 1989 and became a Canadian citizen in 1994. In April 2001, he came to the United States to find work. Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Baloch and several other Muslim men were arrested on immigration violations and transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center (“MDC”) in Brooklyn. According to Baloch, he and the others were placed in MDC’s Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit (“ADMAX SHU”) for more than twenty-three hours per day, where they were strip-searched, shackled when removed from their cells, and verbally and physically abused by prison guards for several months.

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