Civil Liberties
1,361 Articles

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An unfortunate story on the non-review of U.S. surveillance authority in Section 702
Federal oversight agency punts on international human rights, while findings the programs lawful and constitutional The President’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (“PCLOB”)…

Did PCLOB Answer My Eight Questions About Section 702?
TL;DR: A little bit, but not enough. Yesterday, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) issued a massive report about the legally and technologically complicated…

Cloud City: A Fourth Amendment Thought Experiment
Reading the Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s rather tepid report on NSA surveillance under §702 of the FISA Amendments Act last night, I found myself thinking…

Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board Releases Report on Section 702 Surveillance (Full Text)
On Tuesday evening, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB)—an independent body within the Executive Branch—released a major report concerning the National…

Riley v. California — An Important Step Forward, but How Far Forward?
The joined cases of Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie rightly have been hailed as a ringing endorsement of privacy in the digital age. By holding that police may…

Fifth Circuit on Extraterritorial Application of Fourth and Fifth Amendments
On the heels of this morning’s Fourth Circuit decision in the Abu Ghraib case comes another significant circuit-level decision–this one from the Fifth Circuit. The…

A Rejoinder to Jeff Kahn on Latif and Fundamental Rights
In Jeff Kahn’s response today to my post last week about American citizens’ right not to be stranded abroad by their government, Jeff asks more about my views: “Is international…

A Reply to Margo Schlanger on Latif and Fundamental Rights
Margo Schlanger’s post on Thursday takes as its “vital point” the right of an American citizen to reenter the United States. Margo is responding to Tuesday’s news about…

Pleasant Surprises – and One Disappointment – in the Supreme Court’s Cell Phone Decision
As commentators quickly recognized, there’s just cause for celebration in this week’s Supreme Court decision in Riley v. California, requiring a warrant to search an arrestee’s…

The Supreme Court Goes to War:
Hamdi, Padilla, and Rasul at 10
Ten years ago tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its first three decisions in post-September 11 terrorism cases: Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, and Rasul v.…

New Resource — Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse FISA Archives
Thanks to Just Security for letting me blog today about a new resource. Obviously there have been load of disclosures about FISA matters over the past year—between the Snowden…

Report and Recommendations from the Stimson Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy
Later this morning, the Stimson Center’s Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy is scheduled to formally release a report and series of recommendations to the Obama Administration…