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
Key Issues in the New Senate Bill to Require White House Drone Strike Casualty Reports
This week, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014. The legislation contains an important section which would…
The Basis for the NSA’s Call-Tracking Program Has Disappeared, If It Ever Existed [Updated]
There’s a significant discrepancy, one that deserves more attention, between what the NSA told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court five years ago about the call-tracking…
The Process of Transferring Drone Operations from the CIA to the Pentagon: Slow Track, Just Stalled, or Terminal?
On Tuesday evening, Foreign Policy published an exclusive report, with a headline suggesting that the administration has terminated the idea of transferring drone operations from…
Spy v. Spy?: The coming push to create an EU spy agency to counteract the NSA
In an interview on Monday, a senior EU official, Commissioner of Justice Viviane Reding unveiled, in broad brushstrokes, a proposal to create a spy agency to counteract the NSA.…
Newsweek’s Wayward Cover Story on Snowden and Chinese Cyber Hacking
Newsweek’s current cover story, “How Edward Snowden Escalated Cyber War with China” by Kurt Eichenwald, is an important read. Eichenwald makes two claims: Snowden’s impact:…
The Constitutionality of a FISA “Special Advocate”
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is holding a day-long hearing today on possible reforms to the NSA’s surveillance activities—especially those conducted…
PCLOB Hearing on NSA Review
Today the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is holding a public hearing on recommended changes to surveillance programs authorized under the USA PATRIOT Act and…
African Commission Emerges as New Forum in Quest for Justice for Rendition Victims
[This post is authored by Roxanne Moore (NYU LLM ’14), Daniella Raveh (NYU JD ’15), Meg Satterthwaite, Amanda Bass (NYU JD ’15), in Banjul, Gambia] Today, we appeared alongside…
We Are All Foreign Nationals — Even Orin Kerr
The always thought-provoking Orin Kerr has responded, on Lawfare, to my plea here for respecting the privacy rights of foreign nationals. Kerr finds my arguments unpersuasive,…
Steve Vladeck Mention on Colbert Report
[Editorial note: Earlier this week, Co-Editor-in-Chief Steve Vladeck testified during the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s open hearing on the NSA and FISA…
Trick or Treat?: New FISA “Reform” Legislation Passes Senate Intelligence Committee
Earlier this week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein expressed outrage that “the Senate Intelligence Committee was not satisfactorily informed” of the NSA’s surveillance…
La Plus Ça Change: A Look Back at Intelligence Gathering Reform
“To understand the past in order to better propose guidance for the future” -Church Commission (1976) Today’s report that the NSA has been tapping into Google and Yahoo data…