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.

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David Addington, Chief of Staff and former counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, former Department of Justice official John Yoo and Chris Schroeder, former acting assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel testify before the House Judiciary committee during a hearing on the administration's interrogation policy on June 26, 2008 in Washington, DC.

ICC Afghanistan Torture Investigation Likely to Turn on Criminal Intent

Good-faith reliance on advice of counsel is a well-established defense in U.S. criminal law, but it has not yet been tested at the ICC.
A temporary hospital is set up at the Jacob K. Javits Center on March 27, 2020 in New York. Cubicles with curtains are set up with a cot, a chair, a backpack, and a small garbage can each.

9/11 All Over Again

As in the days after 9/11, the current challenges stemming from COVID-19 seem unprecedented. But the parallels are striking.
Ryan Meyer, Nike Missile Site Coordinator for Everglades National Park, stands next to a door leading to a bunker attached to one of three facilities that were used to store and potentially launch both conventional and nuclear tipped Nike missiles in reaction to any Russian attack in the Everglades National Park on April 8, 2010 near Everglades City, Florida.

Extend New START — The World Can’t Afford a U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arms Race Too

The chances of successfully negotiating a new, complex deal including China were already slim before the coronavirus pandemic. Now, in the midst of what clearly will be an extended…
Democratic presidential hopeful former US vice president Joe Biden participates in the 11th Democratic Party 2020 presidential debate in a CNN Washington Bureau studio in Washington, DC on March 15, 2020.

Beware, Lobbyists: The Future of FARA Under a Biden Presidency

If Donald Trump loses the upcoming election in November, the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) – the law that’s already tripped up numerous Trump…
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James Risch (R-ID) (L) and ranking member Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

How Congress Can Save Lives, Protect Rights, and Exert U.S. Leadership Globally in Response to Coronavirus

Given the Trump administration’s foreign policy proclivities, it’s likely that Congress will have to do much of the heavy lifting.
US Christine Levinson (C), the wife of ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson, her son Daniel (L) and her sister Susan (R) hold a press conference at the Swiss embassy in Tehran

Iran’s Murder of an American, CIA Contractor Bob Levinson, Suggests Impunity at Home Too

In light of the internal power struggle that turned Levinson into a tragic pawn on the bureaucratic chessboard, fundamental questions remain unanswered.
Israeli police stop a vehicle at a checkpoint in Bnei Barak

Can Governments Track the Pandemic and Still Protect Privacy?

A team of Europeans is creating a different contact-tracing tool that they say is designed to limit the collection and exposure of personal data.
Committee ranking member Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) talks with committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

Congress Must Insert Oversight of Intel Community in COVID Emergency Legislation

Governments often curtail individual liberties when faced with national or global emergencies. Unsurprisingly, one result of the COVID-19 pandemic is that governments around the…
A sign reads, “Wanted by the FBI Chinese PLA Members, 54th Research Institute” and shows four members of China's military indicted on charges of hacking into Equifax Inc. and stealing data from Americans. The sign is seated next to a podium shortly after Attorney General William Barr held a press conference at the Department of Justice on February 10, 2020 in Washington, DC. The sign has additional text that is too small to read.

Disrupt, Don’t Indict: Why the United States Should Stop Indicting Foreign State Actor Hackers

The U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment of Nicolás Maduro, who the United States ceased to recognize as Venezuela’s president in early 2019, for narco-terrorism…
US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell (C), the Presidents of Kosovo Hashim Thaci (L background) and Serbia Aleksandar Vucic (R background) watch the signing of an agreement between Kosovo and Serbia for railway and street projects.

US Burns Credibility in Grenell Quest for Foreign Policy Win, as Kosovo Government Falls

Amid COVID19 crisis, Special Envoy Richard Grenell's pressure on Kosovo precipitates collapse of popular and promising reformist government.
A Palestinian worker gets his temperature checked as he returns home via the Mitar checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, along with fellow workers, on March 25, 2020. The person checking his temperature uses a no-contact thermometer and wears gloves and a full body jumpsuit with hood.

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Ethics in a Pandemic

It is imperative that States and their citizens question how much freedom and privacy should be sacrificed to limit the impact of this pandemic.
People cross a street with cars. There are more street lights than seems needed for such a small street. There are numbers and waves of circles overlaid the image.

How to Think About the Right to Privacy and Using Location Data to Fight COVID-19

"Government officials need to listen to stakeholders and technologists who are not trying to promote private companies’ interests in infection control programs."
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