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.
1,805 Articles
FISC OKs Section 215 Investigations of Americans, Despite First Amendment
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court declassified an opinion today which, although highly redacted, illuminates the way at least one Judge is interpreting his mandate to…
Intercept Reporting Raises Broader Metadata Minimization Question
Does the NSA minimize Americans metadata? Today’s reporting by the Intercept calls into question whether the NSA minimizes so-called metadata relating to Americans’ digital…
ODNI’s Civil Liberties Protection Officer Sets Forth Defense of 12333 Surveillance
Earlier this month, New York Times reporter Charlie Savage covered public criticisms made by John Napier Tye, a departing State Department official, of the NSA’s collection…
Disappearing People and Disappearing the Evidence: The Deeper Significance of the SSCI Report
When the executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) report on the CIA’s torture program is finally released, it is likely to discredit a story…
Executive Order 12333, Notice, and the Due Process Rights of Criminal Defendants
In a world of electronic surveillance and secret searches, notice is more essential than ever. Notice allows criminal defendants to test whether the government’s evidence was,…
Torture and the SSCI Report
This August, torture is once again on our minds. On the heels of President Obama’s rather callous admission that “we tortured some folks,” the Senate Select Committee on…
Spying Among Friends: The Troubled Waters of the CIA and BND
The rapid erosion of US-German relations continues to prompt much attention and consternation on both sides of the Atlantic. The new era urged by presidential candidate Barack…
Judge Bates (Unintentionally) Makes the Case for FISC Reform
Whatever one thinks of the Senate version of the USA FREEDOM Act–which offers a series of substantive and procedural reforms to U.S. surveillance programs–it is now…
Myth Busting?: NSA Mass Foreign Surveillance Over 30 Years Ago
NSA surveillance, in the context of post-9/11 counterterrorism, is often characterized by an exceptional technological capacity and strategic commitment to “Collect It All.”…
“Techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture”: Redacted CIA report summary now in the hands of the SSCI–What next? [UPDATED]
[UPDATED August 2] The President announced yesterday that the Executive branch has now provided to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence a partially declassified version…
Updated developments regarding FAA Section 702 and related matters
I’ve published a couple of posts here tracking some of the more important recent developments respecting Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This post is an…
Court Rules Against Microsoft: Questions of Data, Territoriality, and the Government’s Search Authority Headed to the 2nd Circuit
I blogged previously about the really interesting dispute between Microsoft and the government regarding the territorial reach of the warrant authority under ECPA. As you may recall,…