Intelligence & Surveillance
Just Security’s expert authors provide legal and policy analysis of intelligence and surveillance activities, focusing on their impact on national security and on civil liberties and privacy rights, and their oversight by Congress and the courts.
1,846 Articles
Deterrence by Indictment?
In an indictment released this morning, the Justice Department charged seven Iranians with carrying out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on US financial institutions…
FBI Discovers It Can Access That iPhone After All
Update: The FBI is now explicitly denying that the method described in this post is the one they’re planning to employ — so apparently my suspicion was mistaken and they…
Update from the European Frontlines: The Battle for Belgium
The dramatic footage of counterterrorism raids in Belgium emerging on our news screens over the last few days is a sharp contrast to the perceived inaction that characterized the…
So Software Has Eaten the World: What Does It Mean for Human Rights, Security & Governance?
In 2011, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen famously wrote the startling essay, Why Software is Eating the World, in which he described how emerging companies…
Strong Intelligence Oversight Can Happen Within the Executive Branch
That the American public is divided on the current showdown between Silicon Valley and the national security state is to be expected. What is more striking, at least at first blush,…
Overseas Surveillance in an Interconnected World
Outside the pages of Just Security and a handful of other places, it’s hard to find much debate over the NSA’s overseas surveillance activities. The same lawmakers and pundits…
The Fuzzy Scope of the Forever War Needs Definition
For years now, the questions of where and with whom exactly the United States is at war have been treated as somewhat academic. It’s not that they didn’t matter, but a gridlocked…
The Growing Divide Between European Governments and Regional Courts on Surveillance
Last week, as he delivered his first report to the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy made headlines with his sharp criticism of the United…
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 Supreme Court Could Use an Expert on National Security or International Law
One doesn’t hear much about the Supreme Court as a team these days, but in fact for most of the life of the Court this has been one of its principal modes of operating. Although…
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…