Thinking how much fun it must be defending those poor souls held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba? You get to wear cool uniforms and have access to all the high tech the government has to offer, right?  Well, sure, though the government still has its own idea about how this whole defending the enemy combatants thing works.

From the  Washington Post via the ABA Journal :

The military justice system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has been dogged by charges of secret monitoring of proceedings and defense communications, became embroiled in a fresh controversy Thursday when it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of defense e-mails were turned over to the prosecution.

The breach prompted Col. Karen Mayberry, the chief military defense counsel, to order all attorneys for Guantanamo detainees to stop using Defense Department computer networks to transmit privileged or confidential information until the security of such communications is assured.

Assured? That’s a curious word to use, given that some government agency, suspected to be the CIA but no one can be “assured” since they aren’t talking, accessed 540,000 emails in the defense lawyers’ directories. How exactly does one assure much of anything here?  Because the CIA says it feels really bad about what it did and will never, ever, do it again?

And then there’s this:

In February, a military lawyer acknowledged that microphones were hidden inside devices that looked like smoke detectors in rooms used for meetings between defense counsel and their clients. The military said the listening system was not used to eavesdrop on confidential meetings and had been installed before defense lawyers started to use the rooms. The government subsequently said it tore out the wiring.

So they place mikes in the defense lawyers’ meeting rooms, but it wasn’t to overhear confidential meetings? Was it for a new reality series, Stuff Enemy Combatants Say?  But not that the government says it tore the wiring out, is everything fine again and privacy “assured”?

Or what about this?

That same month, Pohl learned that the soundproofed courtroom at Guantanamo was wired with a “kill switch” that allowed an unknown government entity, thought to be the CIA, to cut audio feed of the trial to the public gallery. Pohl ruled that in the future only he could turn off the audio feed to protect classified information. But defense lawyers questioned whether the audio equipment in the courtroom had been manipulated to allow the government to monitor attorney-client conversations.

You can never be too careful with what the public hears about court proceedings at Gitmo. After all, there could be discussions of water boarding, and that would make public feel bad.

And this too:

In another controversy, defense counsel recently complained that huge volumes of work files were lost when the Defense Department tried to upgrade its network and mirror at Guantanamo the computer system that is available to defense lawyers handling detainee cases in the Washington area.

“Entire files, months of work was just gone,” said Navy Cmdr. Stephen C. Reyes, an attorney for Nashiri. “I have no evidence of any nefarious conduct, but it demonstrates again that we don’t have confidence that our files and communications are secure.”

Tech is great, except when it’s not.  Remarkably, while the defense lost its files, the government didn’t lose any of its evidence against the enemy combatants. How lucky is that?

Just because these efforts are a mere prelude to indefinite detention of people who the government is certain are bad and evil shouldn’t make anyone feel badly for the military lawyers charged with defending them under these conditions. After all, they still get to wear cool uniforms and it’s not like these Gitmo detainees are going anywhere anyway. So what if the tech isn’t working so great down there. Heck, the Cuband are all driving around in ’57 Chevy Belairs held together with duct tape, and they don’t even have FM radio. 

I just thought you ought to know.