I made an appointment with a lawyer for the first time. They booked me for a short call through Microsoft Teams. I felt uncomfortable downgrading my privacy in such a circumstance, so asked if it needed to be Microsoft Teams. They said no, it can be a telephone call, which seems even worse.
WTF!? I don’t know if this is normal for lawyers? If it is, it makes me feel like I’m paranoid for using Signal when these guys don’t even think it’s necessary.
I don’t know what to do.
Well, you can ask for them to use Signal, you can go there in person or you can find a different lawyer who satisfies your privacy requirements.
BTW this is a pretty serious firm… i aint talking no small time Saul Goodman. It really makes me feel like privacy is a waste of time… these guys can’t be using microsoft teams unless they trust them… and if lawyers trust them… then maybe we should too.
We conducted the interview via Microsoft Teams; my spokesperson and one of the hosts were in a room with an impressive background of the official seals of the NSA, the US Central Command, and the United States Cyber Command. I did my end from a World Trade Center conference room, praying my Wi-Fi wouldn’t cut out.
You can tell them to use Jitsi. Like Louis Rossmann did with his doctor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzt0tzsaWDE
Yea, I would meet with them in person first then let them know of your communication requirements before you hire them.
Even if you get them to talk to you through Signal, I bet they’re going to write their notes and reports in Microsoft Word, with all files saved to Onedrive.
Find a tech savvy lawyer. Its kinda hard though.
Several of the lawyers I work with have Signal, one even has a protonmail account so you can send E2EE emails.
The reason most lawyers don’t is for two reasons. One reason has been mentioned - most lawyers are low tech.
Another reason is that in most countries communications with your lawyer are legally protected. In other words, your conversations with your lawyer can’t be used against you.
There are two high profile examples of this happening. One example, a mafia leader who is also a lawyer was organizing the sale of drugs from his law office. Police intercepted these conversations, however because the info is privileged all charges were dropped.
Another example, police monitored mafia members calls with lawyers, seized $35 million. Charges dropped again, all money returned to the mafia.
This is the main reason why lawyers don’t care. Your conversations are legally protected in most countries.
What is your concern with Microsoft Teams? If they are not using personal version of Teams, it shouldn’t be a problem.
If they are using their personal MS account with personal MS Team then it is a problem.
Yeah, we can but, I guess OP post is an alert/reminder to all that we are exposed in many areas of our lives and at a single moment of distraction you can put your privacy at a very high risk.
I sympathize with their comment and curious if those professionals are aware of how to keep their customers privacy protected. They are professionals that should in 2024 be super tech savvy and aware about privacy risks promoting the best practices.
prob only true for USA and other “western” countries where the legal system is competant enough.
I pray to God that this is on paid teams.
This is very informative and I understand the point. Thought id like to point out that even if information gathered about the call could not be used against the person consulting a lawyer in court of law, that information could still be collected to build a profile of the user for resale, ads or any other reason. Is it legal ? Maybe not. Is that going to stop company collecting data ? Answer is the same as of AI companies using all data, including illegally acquired data, to train their ai.
I get your frustation but than MS Teams is already pretty solid. It has pretty decent security if you compare it to other video call solutions. I would rather use that than most other options. If you go look around in health care how they share data and keep information lying around in all kinds of insecure systems… it is far and far worse.
You could be worse and have the entire hospital and its staff use Facebook Messenger to relay lab results (public general hospital).
In another one, they use the unpaid tier of Zoom for meetings. Telegram to do relay lab results and do regular communications with all the personal and hospital info (an even larger hospital with good reputation). At least this institution people are encouraged to use LibreOffice.
Mind you we have “privacy laws” but either it has no real teeth or no one is suing anyone. We also dont have the equivalent of HIPAA, AFAIK.
Here in Argentina almost all lawyers i have met use Signal and Whatsapp.