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
USA Freedom Act: Oh, Well. Whatever. Nevermind.
The initially promising USA Freedom Act could have ended the previously secret government practices of collecting Americans’ calling records, internet transactional information…
Lavabit’s Owner Goes Public: His Legal Ordeal Makes For Bad Law
I’ve written several times here about the Department of Justice’s efforts to force secure email provider Lavabit to turn over its encryption keys. The DOJ wanted transactional…
Is the CIA Drone Program More Accurate than the DOD’s—and if so, why?
Some commentators suggest that we have the data: CIA-directed drone strikes appear to involve fewer civilian casualties (e.g., less collateral damage) on average than DOD-directed drone…
The “Culture of Misinformation” and the Government’s Representations to the Supreme Court in Clapper
In yesterday’s New York Times, Charlie Savage had a new installment in his series about the government’s representations (and misrepresentations) in Clapper v. Amnesty, a…
Crowdsourcing Intelligence – Putting Smart Phones to Good Use
It is painfully clear that there are vast reservoirs of useful, untapped information in the hands of individuals across the world who are already tethered to the digital environment. …
USA FREEDOM: How Many Hops?
Last week’s surprisingly rapid approval of the USA FREEDOM Act by two crucial House committees cheered civil libertarians, even if some of the compromises required to move…
Collect It All!: Newly Released NSA Documents Reveal Omnivorous Appetite for our Private Data
No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald’s inside account of the most significant leak of classified information in American history, is out today. I offer a mixed review of the book…
Video Clip of Former Director of NSA and CIA: “We Kill People Based on Metadata”
In a public debate with Just Security‘s David Cole at Johns Hopkins University, former Director of the NSA and CIA, General Michael Hayden made the provocative remark, “We…
Michael Hayden: “We Kill People Based on Metadata”
[Editor’s note: See the video clip from the debate where General Hayden said “We kill people based on metadata” here.] I have a New York Review of Books blog up today on…
Preview: Lithuania to Face Questioning by UN Committee against Torture about “Black Sites”
On Monday, the UN Committee against Torture (“the Committee” or “the CAT Committee”) will review Lithuania’s third periodic report on its compliance with the Convention…
Magistrate’s Compliance: Searching Electronic Data Overseas
Amidst all the talk about the so-called Magistrates’ Revolt (referring to a group of magistrates pushing back against the government’s broad electronic search requests), it’s…
Interrogation-Based Detentions and the Law of Armed Conflict: What Mohammed v. Ministry of Defense Didn’t Have to Say
I am working on a post that dives into the core issue in Mohammed v. Ministry of Defense (MOD)—whether the law of armed conflict (LOAC) permits security-based detentions in non-international…