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
Civilian Casualty Rates in CIA vs. DOD Drone Programs: Apples and Oranges
Much attention has been given to whether CIA-directed or DOD-directed drone strikes result in fewer civilian casualties. Last week I wrote about the mixed evidence when it comes…
FAA Section 702 developments
Back in February, I posted about the first brief on the merits challenging the constitutionality of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, in the criminal case against…
UN Torture Committee seeks further answers from Lithuania on involvement in CIA detention and rendition
Last week, the UN Committee against Torture adopted its Concluding Observations [full text] on Lithuania’s third periodic report on its compliance with the Convention against…
Targeting Transparency: A Call for DoD to Automatically Release Investigations of Civilian Casualties in Armed Conflict
There has been much discussion on the lack of demonstrable government follow through after President Obama’s 2013 claims of increased transparency of US lethal targeting of suspected…
Why We Can’t Support the New USA FREEDOM Act
[Editor’s Note: Just Security has been closely following the congressional proposals, including the USA FREEDOM Act, introduced in recent months aimed to curb the administration’s surveillance authorities.…
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…