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.
1,807 Articles
Senator McConnell’s Modest Proposal to Reform Section 215: Don’t!
With only 14 legislative days remaining (in the House, anyway) before Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act (which the government argues, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance…
As the Senate Torture Report Gathers Dust, Is the Obama Administration Giving Torturers De Facto Amnesty?
It has been more than four months since the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) published the summary of its report on the secret detention program operated by the CIA after the…
Just Security’s Guide to the 2016 Presidential Candidates and National Security
The 2016 presidential election is more than 18 months away, but the races are already heating up with Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Hillary Clinton in the running so far.…
Rethinking How We Wage the Forever War
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…
More on Flawed Research and Flawed Counterterrorism Policies
I want to concur with the thoughtful views articulated by Michael German last week addressing terrorism and counterterrorism research. Having spent twenty years working and researching…
Appointing Democratic Judges to the FISA Court Won’t Solve Its Structural Flaws
Chief Justice Roberts recently named two new judges to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) — Judge James P. Jones from the Western District of Virginia and Judge…
The Targeted Killing That Wasn’t: What We Can Learn From the Case of Mohanad Mahmoud al-Farekh
A 2009 US Air Force photo titled “Ready to hunt” shows an armed MQ-9 Reaper drone taxiing in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Almost two weeks ago, we learned from the Washington…
The Patriot Act’s Sunset is the Perfect Chance to Make the FISA Court More Like a Real Court
In the coming weeks, Congress must decide whether to renew the Patriot Act, which the National Security Agency (NSA) uses to collect Americans’ telephone records in bulk, regardless…
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…
The Unreal Secrecy About Drone Killings
Last year, after concluding that many passages in the document “no longer merited secrecy,” the Second Circuit published a redacted version of the Justice Department’s July…
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…