Many American attorneys are spooked by the U.S. government’s mass surveillance programs, a new report says.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union compiled the report, titled "With Liberty to Monitor All," to document how National Security Agency programs exposed by exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden impact journalists and lawyers.

“The legal community, perhaps even more so than the media, is plagued by uncertainty and confusion over the implications for their work of surveillance of the scope revealed during the last year,” the report says.

Attorneys interviewed for the report are largely “feeling frustrated,” and there’s an apparent “erosion of the right to counsel,” researcher Alex Sinha, a fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, said Monday at the National Press Club.

In addition to generalized concerns about phone and Internet surveillance, attorneys have a specialized interest in the privacy of privileged communications with clients, and at least one leak from Snowden amplified fears that the NSA may disregard that pillar of the U.S. legal system.

The New York Times reported in February that a classified document showed the Australian government spied on communications between the Indonesian government and a U.S. law firm and gave the information to the NSA, "providing highly useful intelligence for interested U.S. customers."

Then-NSA Director Keith Alexander attempted to reassure lawyers, writing in a March 10 letter to the American Bar Association the agency “has afforded, and will continue to afford, appropriate protection to privileged attorney-client communications” and “has taken a variety of appropriate steps to protect potentially privileged information.”

Alexander wrote that the NSA’s Office of General Counsel reviews intercepted communications that may be privileged on a case-by-case basis and that the office’s subsequent guidance may include “appropriate warnings or restrictions on use” of those records.

Still, some attorneys aren’t comforted.

“We are fearful that our communications with witnesses abroad are monitored,” Army Judge Advocate General Maj. Jason Wright told researchers.

“Every person you’re touching, you’re potentially poisoning,” University of California-Hastings law professor Ahmed Ghappour said.

Defense attorney Linda Moreno said that “[g]iven the now publicly admitted revelations that there is no privacy in communications, including those between attorneys and their clients, I feel ethically obligated to tell all clients that I can’t guarantee anything [they] say is privileged.”

Another attorney who works on national security cases, Nancy Hollander, uses an email footer informing recipients their emails may be intercepted by the NSA, the report says.

Whistleblower attorney Jesselyn Radack, director of the National Security and Human Rights Program at the Government Accountability Project, uses a similar footer, which says: “This communication may be unlawfully collected and stored by the National Security Agency (NSA) in secret. The parties to this email do not consent to the retrieving or storing of this communication and any related metadata.” Radack wasn't quoted in the report.

None of the attorneys cited were as blunt as conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, who in December won the first and thus far only federal court ruling against the constitutionality of the NSA's bulk collection of U.S. phone records. Klayman frequently accuses the NSA of "messing with" him, citing unusual email and phone issues. Earlier this month, Klayman told U.S. News he believed "bored" NSA agents had recently tampered with his email.

Some attorneys interviewed for the report said they have turned to encryption and/or reduced their electronic communications with clients. One unnamed attorney said his law office uses its own servers to shield records from the government.

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Other lawyers, however, expressed fear of appearing to be engaged in criminal behavior by taking measures to protect against surveillance, or said they distrusted encryption.

"I don't want to look like I'm doing something illegal," said James Connell III, who represents a Guantánamo Bay detainee.