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

Canada Considers Most Far-Reaching Intell Reforms in Decades
The proposed bill strikes a healthy balance between facing up to new cyber-threats and ensuring accountability and oversight.

Intelligence, Ethics and Bureaucracy: The Duty to Warn Jamal Khashoggi
The Knight First Amendment Institute and the Committee to Protect Journalists have obtained "Duty to Warn" documents that shed new light on what a U.S. intelligence officer would…

Barr and Congress: Is the Focus on Criminality Too Narrow?–Five Experts Weigh In
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s questioning of Attorney General William Barr yesterday raises the question of whether Congress, in responding to the findings in Special Counsel…

JFK Records Suit Tests CIA Secrecy on Assassination
Morley v. CIA has wound its way through the courts for 16 years, and revealed some juicy nuggets along the way. The plaintiff, who is the biographer of two top CIA operations officers,…

Split Over Compelled Decryption Deepens With Massachusetts Case
Encryption is as omnipresent as computers, tablets, and smartphones. Yet the Supreme Court has not provided guidance on the constitutional implications of compelling a suspect…

CBP’s New Social Media Surveillance: A Threat to Free Speech and Privacy
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's efforts to map out the networks and activities of American activists and journalists through link analysis and social media monitoring pose…

A Caution on Congressional Subpoenas and “Constitutional Crisis”
Last week, as part of its ongoing investigation into White House security clearance procedures, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform subpoenaed former White House personnel…

New DoD Policy on Amends Needs to Address Transparency Gap
New information from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) reveals a previously unrecognized transparency gap in the U.S. military’s efforts to acknowledge and address civilian…

The (Redacted) Mueller Report: First Takes from the Experts
A roundup of leading experts' views on the publicly released — and redacted — Mueller report.

Is Trump a Russian Agent?: Explaining Terms of Art and Examining the Facts
Former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service explains why CIA would never try to recruit someone with Donald Trump's profile, and what may also give the Kremlin pause…

Barr’s Redaction Process, cont’d
Attorney General William Barr testified at length last week, in the House and the Senate, about his ongoing process of redacting the Mueller Report in anticipation of sharing it…

Julian Assange and Omar al-Bashir: What Comes Next for Two Global Fugitives?
Yesterday was a breathtaking one for global criminal justice. First, British police arrested Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and then, just hours later, the…