Civil Liberties
1,474 Articles
Is Snowden Obliged to Accept Punishment?
This is Secretary of State John Kerry’s answer, given May 28 on CBS This Morning: “He should man up, come back to the United States. If he has a complaint about what’s…
What You Should Know–and Why You Should Care–About the Latest Guantánamo Litigation
It’s been well over three years since Linda Greenhouse, writing for the New York Times, attributed the Supreme Court’s refusal to take any new cases from Guantánamo…
FAA Section 702 developments
Back in February, I posted about the first brief on the merits challenging the constitutionality of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, in the criminal case against…
Declassification of the CIA interrogation program: Developments on three fronts
Last month I published a post setting forth the state of play regarding the declassification and disclosure of the executive summary, and findings and conclusions, of the Senate…
David Barron and the OTHER missing memos
David Barron was just confirmed to the First Circuit. To secure that vote, the Administration announced it would not appeal the Second Circuit’s order to turn over a redacted…
Options for Accountability in Syria
The Security Council is poised today to vote on a resolution referring the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This would be the third such referral following…
Why We Can’t Support the New USA FREEDOM Act
[Editor’s Note: Just Security has been closely following the congressional proposals, including the USA FREEDOM Act, introduced in recent months aimed to curb the administration’s surveillance authorities.…
USA Freedom Act: Oh, Well. Whatever. Nevermind.
The initially promising USA Freedom Act could have ended the previously secret government practices of collecting Americans’ calling records, internet transactional information…
Lavabit’s Owner Goes Public: His Legal Ordeal Makes For Bad Law
I’ve written several times here about the Department of Justice’s efforts to force secure email provider Lavabit to turn over its encryption keys. The DOJ wanted transactional…
Judge Bates and FISA Reform
Over at Lawfare, I have a short post on the terribly weak provisions with regard to a “special advocate” to argue before the FISA Court in the Manager’s Amendment…
The “Culture of Misinformation” and the Government’s Representations to the Supreme Court in Clapper
In yesterday’s New York Times, Charlie Savage had a new installment in his series about the government’s representations (and misrepresentations) in Clapper v. Amnesty, a…
Backgrounder: Preliminary Examination into Abuses by United Kingdom Personnel in Iraq
As we reported earlier, the ICC Office of the Prosecutor has reopened the preliminary examination into crimes committed by United Kingdom personnel in Iraq from 2003-2008 during…