Civil Liberties
1,369 Articles
Law Enforcement Online: Innovative Doesn’t Mean Illegal
Even the Wild West needed a sheriff. And today’s law enforcement agents, to be effective, need more than a Colt .45 and a gold star. Criminal actors have an increasing ability…
Security and the Internet of Things
On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced a program to better secure the “Internet of Things” and also highlighted the opportunities networked devices provide for the…
MLAT Reform and the 80 Percent Solution
Last week, The Washington Post reported that the US and the UK were in negotiations to permit UK law enforcement agencies to request stored communications like email and chats…
Surveillance Is Still About Power
Since the Snowden revelations in 2013, surveillance has gone from a somewhat arcane term of art used mainly by scholars, spies, and tinfoil hat types, to a household word that…
A New UK-US Data Sharing Agreement: A Tremendous Opportunity, If Done Right
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…
The High Standard of Proof in the Encryption Debate
Since the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris set off another around of debate about exceptional access, a lot of ink has been spilled on the subject of whether or not there…
Questions Congress Should Ask About Section 702
After passing a surveillance reform bill last year, Congress appears poised to turn to examine another controversial surveillance authority — Section 702 of FISA. Using Section…
Why We Need to Reevaluate How We Share Intelligence Data With Allies
Last week, Canadians learned that their foreign signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), had improperly shared information with their American,…
IBM’s Terrorist-Hunting Software Raises Troubling Questions
Last week, Defense One published an article about a new use that IBM is pioneering for its data-crunching software: identifying potential terrorists in the stream of refugees entering…
Cryptopanic and James Comey’s Xanatos Gambit
For the past year or so I’ve been part of a cybersecurity working group at Harvard’s Berkman Center that on Monday released its first public report, Don’t Panic: Making Progress…
Moving Beyond the “Going Dark” Frame
For more than a year now, this site has posted dozens of articles critiquing the US government’s claims that it needs a method of accessing encrypted digital communications…
Democracy in Peril in Poland
The collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe unleashed one of the most remarkable political transformations of modern times, paving the way for millions of Europeans…