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.
1,837 Articles
There Will Be Surveillance Reform
How should we understand the Senate’s failure to pass the USA Freedom Act on Tuesday? I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure it’s misguided to propose, as Steve Vladeck did…
The End of the Snowden Affair
Sometime around 7:30 p.m. (EST) last night, the 17-month-long national conversation over how to reform U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance authorities effectively ended when…
Full Virginia State Court Opinion on Passcodes vs. Fingerprints
A couple of weeks back, there was a flurry of media coverage of a Virginia state court opinion where the judge granted an order to compel a defendant’s fingerprint to unlock…
The FBI Doesn’t Need More Access: We’re Already in the Golden Age of Surveillance
This post comes in advance of this afternoon’s debate between Just Security contributors Andrew Weissmann and Peter Swire about Law Enforcement vs. SmartPhone Encryption at…
The Surveillance State’s Legalism Isn’t About Morals, It’s About Manipulating the Rules
Margo Schlanger has written a great article forthcoming in the Harvard National Security Journal about intelligence legalism, an ethical framework she sees underlying NSA surveillance.…
Passing the Senate Gavels
Editors’ Note: The following post is the tenth installment of a new feature, “Monday Reflections,” in which a different Just Security editor will take an in-depth look…
The Problem With Legalism in the Surveillance State
Editor’s note: this post is a preview of ideas raised in an upcoming article by the author, Intelligence Legalism and the National Security Agency’s Civil Liberties Gap,…
Extending Privacy Protections to Foreigners Will Benefit Americans
I wanted to add a few thoughts to Ryan Goodman’s post outlining policy arguments for and against giving foreigners the same privacy protections enjoyed by Americans (at least…
A Cult of Rules: The Origins of Legalism in the Surveillance State
Editor’s note: this post is a preview of ideas raised in an upcoming article by the author, Intelligence Legalism and the National Security Agency’s Civil Liberties Gap,…
National Security Politics in the 114th Congress
Last September, I wrote a post exploring whether some of the congressional reactions to the Snowden disclosures might have been portents of a coming political realignment on national…
A Republican Senate Takeover Won’t Doom Surveillance Reform
Late on the evening of May 29, 2014, California Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D) called a small, bipartisan group of lawmakers to her office in the Longworth Building on the Capitol Hill campus.…
2014 Congressional Midterms and Surveillance Reform: Races to Watch
This is the first of two posts discussing the future of surveillance reform after the 2014 midterms. The second post is available here. The high water mark for NSA reforms in the…