Civil Liberties
1,361 Articles

The Interface of IHL and IHR: A Taxonomy
As the excellent Jinks/Corn/Rona series on IHL/IHR notes, there are a number of theories surrounding the interface between international humanitarian law (or the law of armed conflict)…

Al-Liby: Male Captus, Bene Detentus?
Further to Marty’s post today on the question of Libya’s consent vel non to the recent al-Liby operation, we should also call attention to a long-withheld OLC opinion (13 U.S.…

Selective Disclosure About Targeted Killing
For several years, the ACLU has been pressing the Obama administration to be more transparent about the targeted-killing program. I’m starting to wonder whether it understands…

“Relevance” at the Royale Inn
The NSA’s controversial call records program is predicated on the extraordinary premise that the phone logs of nearly all Americans are “relevant” to an intelligence…

NSA Bulk Collection, the “Corporate Store,” and the Forgotten ECPA Loophole
This weekend’s New York Times report on NSA aggregation of large databases to map the social networks of US citizens contains a reminder that the vast bulk phone records…

Journalism and/as Espionage: A Surreply to Gabriel Schoenfeld
I suspect we’re quickly reaching the point in the conversation about the relationship between national security journalism and espionage in which everything has been said,…

Gabriel Schoenfeld Responds to Lederman and Vladeck
I thank both Steve Vladeck and Marty Lederman for commenting on my post, a post that was drawn from a longer article, Journalism or Espionage? just published in the fall issue…

The Shutdown and the Guantánamo Transfer Restrictions
Although folks disagree over how big an obstacle it really is, one of the bigger political (if not legal) obstacles to transferring detainees out of Guantánamo (to other countries)…

The Kris Paper, and the Problematic FISC Opinion on the Section 215 “Metadata” Collection Program [UPDATED Oct. 14]
If you haven’t done so already, you really ought to read David Kris’s very thoughtful and comprehensive paper on the Section 215 metadata collection program, a précis…

Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Act — Language Now Available
Yesterday, I wrote about the proposed Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act. The language of the proposed bill is not yet available on the Library of Congress’…

Making Sense of the NSA Metadata Collection Program and the “Administrative Search” Doctrine
As most people on the planet now know, the National Security Agency obtains detailed records of the “metadata” of essentially every call – domestic and international –…

Reforming FISA: A Critical Look at the Wyden/Udall Proposal and Foreign Surveillance
A new bipartisan bill co-sponsored by two of the most vocal critics of the NSA does not go far enough to protect the average non-U.S. person from indiscriminate surveillance. …