Civil Liberties
1,361 Articles
Advancing Human Rights from Within: The Footsteps of Harold Koh
The 2015 annual meeting of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) is well underway this week in Washington, DC. Five years ago Harold Koh, as Legal Adviser of the State…
The Investigation into 12333 Begins
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) voted 4–1 yesterday to conduct reviews of how Executive Order 12333 is used in counterterrorism investigations by the…
The DEA’s Bulk Collection Program
Defenders of the NSA’s notorious bulk telephony program have stressed since it was first disclosed that the massive database of calling information can only be used for national…
Talking About Section 215: A Readers’ Guide
Media coverage of John Oliver’s critique about the lack of discussion surrounding government surveillance programs seems to prove his point. Much, if not most, of the attention…
Is Flawed Terrorism Research Driving Flawed Counterterrorism Policies?
More than thirteen years after the U.S. intelligence community named the prevention of terrorism its number one goal, it seems to have little understanding of what drives terrorism,…
A Proper Response to the Massacre at Kenya’s Garissa University College
The magnitude of last week’s massacre at Garissa University College in Kenya, located roughly 100 miles from the Somalia border, is shocking. In the course of the day, the death…
How a Case of Stolen Corn Seeds Shows the Problem with the FISA Court
As collateral challenges to the mass surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden like US v. Moalin, US v. Muhtorov, and US v. Mohamud are winding their way through the courts,…
Wikimedia v. NSA: Standing and the Fight for Free Speech and Privacy
On March 10, 2015, represented by the ACLU, the Wikimedia Foundation and eight co-plaintiffs filed suit against the NSA, the Justice Department, and others, over the mass search…
Diplomatic Assurances, Torture, and Judicial Review:
The Bimenyimana Appeal
Later this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear argument in one of the more quietly important torture cases to come before the federal courts in the…
Ninth Circuit Grants En Banc Rehearing in Posse Comitatus / Unlawful Surveillance Case
Back in September, I wrote about the Ninth Circuit’s fascinating decision in United States v. Dreyer, which applied the exclusionary rule to suppress evidence obtained…
The Right Way to Share Information and Improve Cybersecurity
This year is turning out to be a banner one for flawed proposals that would allow businesses to share information about Americans’ online activity with the Department of Homeland…
Reforming the FISA Court
There has been much discussion, on the pages of this blog and elsewhere (here, here, and here to name just a few), about the procedural shortcomings of the FISA Court — the lack…