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
Other Uses of the NSA Call Records Database—Fingerprinting Burners?
We’ve now heard in some detail about how the NSA made use of its vast database of call records to investigate links between terror suspects via “contact chaining”…
Government Shutdown Postpones Declassification Review of FISC Opinion
Today, the FISC granted the government’s motion to delay a declassification review of prior FISC opinions regarding the legality of Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Contrary…
Selective Disclosure About Targeted Killing
For several years, the ACLU has been pressing the Obama administration to be more transparent about the targeted-killing program. I’m starting to wonder whether it understands…
“Relevance” at the Royale Inn
The NSA’s controversial call records program is predicated on the extraordinary premise that the phone logs of nearly all Americans are “relevant” to an intelligence…
New NSA Reform Proposal from Sen. Leahy and Rep. Sensenbrenner
While the continued government shutdown has sidelined an estimated 800,000 federal employees and resulted in the cancellation of President Obama’s trip to Asia this weekend,…
Recent Filings in Case Challenging NSA metadata program (ACLU v. Clapper)
Earlier this summer the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s collection of telephony metadata under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. This is one…
NSA Bulk Collection, the “Corporate Store,” and the Forgotten ECPA Loophole
This weekend’s New York Times report on NSA aggregation of large databases to map the social networks of US citizens contains a reminder that the vast bulk phone records…
Journalism and/as Espionage: A Surreply to Gabriel Schoenfeld
I suspect we’re quickly reaching the point in the conversation about the relationship between national security journalism and espionage in which everything has been said,…
Gabriel Schoenfeld Responds to Lederman and Vladeck
I thank both Steve Vladeck and Marty Lederman for commenting on my post, a post that was drawn from a longer article, Journalism or Espionage? just published in the fall issue…
The Kris Paper, and the Problematic FISC Opinion on the Section 215 “Metadata” Collection Program [UPDATED Oct. 14]
If you haven’t done so already, you really ought to read David Kris’s very thoughtful and comprehensive paper on the Section 215 metadata collection program, a précis…
Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Act — Language Now Available
Yesterday, I wrote about the proposed Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act. The language of the proposed bill is not yet available on the Library of Congress’…
Making Sense of the NSA Metadata Collection Program and the “Administrative Search” Doctrine
As most people on the planet now know, the National Security Agency obtains detailed records of the “metadata” of essentially every call – domestic and international –…