Hacker News Reader

Comment by georgyo | Hacker News Reader

Also not a lawyer, but my understanding:

Lawyers, doctors, and therapists (also technically doctors) do not need to share and cannot be forced.

They cannot be forced to share privileged information they may have. However, this does not protect the class of information as a whole. IE if you share your medical or legal information to a third party, they can be forced to share it.

View on HN

> Lawyers, doctors, and therapists (also technically doctors) do not need to share and cannot be forced.

This is not quite correct.

Lawyers, doctors, and therapists (who very often technically are not doctors of any kind), spouses, and clergy have various privileges which limit the scope and circumstances in which they can be compelled, which limits what court orders should be issued and may be raised on motions to quash such orders after they are issued.

Possibly also journalists, although this is less respected in practice.

Journalists have no such protection under US federal law. Some states do have journalist shield laws but those are irrelevant in federal cases.

Journalists have a limited First Amendment right not to be forced to reveal information or confidential news sources in court. There’s a lot of caveats related to this though. It’s called “reporter’s privilege.”

There is no such thing as reporter's privilege in the US Constitution or federal law. You're just making things up.

Spouses too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com