Civil Liberties
1,361 Articles
Five Important Questions About DEA’s Vehicle Surveillance Program
With each week, we seem to learn about a new government location tracking program. This time, it’s the expanded use of license plate readers. According to the Wall Street Journal, relying…
You Should Care About Mutual Legal Assistance More Than You Do
About a year ago, I wrote here that the mutual legal assistance (MLA) regime – the legal system that regulates government-to-government requests for evidence in criminal investigations,…
OHCHR Call for Comments on Encryption and Anonymity Online
David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on protection and promotion of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has issued a call for submission of information related to…
What it Really Means to “Close Guantánamo”
[Editors’ Note: 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…
The Latest Rules on How Long NSA Can Keep Americans’ Encrypted Data Look Too Familiar
Does the National Security Agency (NSA) have the authority to collect and keep all encrypted Internet traffic for as long as is necessary to decrypt that traffic? That was a question…
Charlie Hebdo, The Interview, and Censoring Torture Photos
In France and the United States, there seems to be near-universal agreement that to self-censor because of threats of violence is unwise and cowardly. The slogan “Je Suis Charlie,”…
The Torture Report, the CIA’s “Work of Fiction,” and a Friday-afternoon Letter From DOJ
In an earlier post, I called attention to the revelation in the Senate torture report that the CIA contemplated disclosing information about the torture program under cover of…
Decrypting John Boehner on the Capitol Bomb Plotter
An Ohio man was recently charged with plotting to blow up the U.S. Captiol, and House Speaker John Boehner appears to be claiming that the NSA’s controversial bulk telephony…
Al-Marri’s End and the Failed Experiment of Domestic Military Detention
In the coming days, Ali al-Marri, former enemy combatant, is scheduled to be released from federal criminal custody, clearing the way for his removal by immigration officials to…
US Government Seeks to Deny Twitter’s “Warrant Canary” Challenge
On Friday, the Justice Department asked a federal district court to brush away a lawsuit filed in October by Twitter seeking greater freedom to publicly report on the numbers and…
A Turning Point in the Afghan War?
[Editors’ Note: 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…
The Shrinking Military Commissions
Yesterday’s news that the Convening Authority for the Guantánamo military commissions has “disapproved the findings and sentence,” and dismissed the charges…