Civil Liberties
1,361 Articles

FOIA Litigation Has Its Own Rules, But We Deserve Better
When will federal judges start acting more like State Department flacks? It’s a question worth thinking about during Sunshine Week. For those of us who regularly litigate national…

More Transparent Than Thou
At the dawn of his second term, President Obama declared, “This is the most transparent administration in history, and I can document how that is the case.” But three years…

The FBI Wants Schools to Spy on Their Students’ Thoughts
Imagine you’re a high school principal. An FBI document lands on your desk. It’s called “Preventing Violent Extremism in Schools,” and it’s alarming. According to the…

We Need to Know More About How the Government Censors Its Employees
In December, in a series of editorials published in The Washington Post and Just Security, Jack Goldsmith and Oona Hathaway made the case for reforming the government’s broken…

DOJ’s appeal to district court judge from Magistrate Orenstein’s rejection of Apple All Writs Act order
is here; I have not yet read it. It will be considered by Judge Margo Brodie.

Reminder: You Should Care About Mass Surveillance, Even if You’ve Done Nothing Wrong
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…

UK Government Introduces Revised Investigatory Powers Bill in Parliament
Yesterday, the UK government introduced a revised version of its Investigatory Powers Bill (aka the “snooper’s charter”) to Parliament. The bill seeks to consolidate, for…

A Readers’ Guide to the Apple All Writs Act Cases
The last few weeks and months have been awash in media coverage of two cases before magistrate judges involving the federal government seeking to use the All Writs Act to compel…

[UPDATED] Magistrate Judge Orenstein’s order in the EDNY, denying DOJ’s All Writs Act request . . .
. . . is here. The order that the government requested the judge to issue would have required Apple to bypass the passcode security on an iPhone 5s (which used Apple’s iOS…

Apple’s motion to vacate the All Writs Act assistance order: Has Apple chosen the best “test case”?
Here it is. On first read, I think it has some very strong sections, including, in particular, its description of the efforts Apple would have to undertake to create and secure…

Apple vs. FBI: “Just This Once”?
I wrote about the FBI’s attempt to force Apple to write an iPhone hacking tool for the bureau over at Time last week — and go read that if you’re getting caught up on the…

Who Sets the Rules of the Privacy and Security Game?
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…