Civil Liberties
1,369 Articles
The Human Rights Risks of Countering Violent Extremism Programs
With national and international institutions scrambling to adopt Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programs, the UN Special Rapporteur for counterterrorism and human rights, Ben…
The Obama Administration Has Embraced Legal Theories Even Broader Than John Yoo’s
The Justice Department recently released another of the now-notorious Office of Legal Counsel memos written by John Yoo — memos that authorized torture, warrantless wiretapping,…
ODNI Response on Increased Intelligence Sharing Still Leaves Questions and Concerns
In late February, The New York Times reported that the administration was preparing to expand sharing of the mass signals intelligence collected by NSA pursuant to Executive Order…
Bye-Bye Birdie: reddit’s Warrant Canary Disappears
Sometimes, saying nothing says quite a lot. At the end of January 2015, the online bulletin board reddit issued a “transparency report” that informed its users, and the broader…
Four Takeaways From State v. Andrews
On Wednesday, an appellate court in Maryland handed down a major loss to the government, one that will send police and prosecutors back to the drawing board (or at least back to…
The New Intelligence Sharing Procedures Are Not About Law Enforcement
[Editor’s Note: The author composed this analytic essay while serving as General Counsel for the Director of National Intelligence.] There has been a lot of speculation about…
We Need to Know More About When the FBI Can Access One of the NSA’s Biggest Databases
Americans have learned quite a bit about electronic surveillance since Edward Snowden leaked a massive trove of classified documents almost three years ago. And while we still…
Update on the “Snooper’s Charter”
On March 15, the UK’s Investigatory Powers Bill had its second reading in the House of Commons (see my earlier posts on the bill here and here). It passed with 281 votes in favor…
Engines of Liberty: How Civil Society Helped Restore Constitutional Rights in the Aftermath of 9/11
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…
Digital Disruption of Human Rights
Last week, we explored the conceptual challenges to the universal human rights framework that have been brought by digital technology. Today, we shift from conceptual to concrete…
Surveillance Oversight Should Be President-Proof, But We’re Still a Long Way Off
Last week, at an event co-hosted by Just Security and NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, the NSA’s Civil Liberties and Privacy Director Rebecca Richards dropped the ball. When…
FBI Discovers It Can Access That iPhone After All
Update: The FBI is now explicitly denying that the method described in this post is the one they’re planning to employ — so apparently my suspicion was mistaken and they…