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

Congress Should Place More Limits on Cellphone Location Tracking After Carpenter
This spring, the United States Supreme Court will issue a ruling in the landmark case of Carpenter v. United States, deciding whether the government requires a warrant to continuously…

Mr. Zuckerberg, Here’s How You Should Be Regulated
On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg finally ended days of silence and set out on a media tour to explain Facebook’s role in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. CNN’s Laurie Segall…

Just Security Podcast: Britain’s Response to the Russia Spy Poisoning
While it already feels like it happened ages ago, last week, British Prime Minister Theresa May declared the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal on British soil to be…

Privacy and Civil Liberties under the CLOUD Act: A Response
[Cross-Posted at Lawfare] In a post last week, Neema Singh Guliani of the ACLU and Naureen Shah of Amnesty International disagreed with our earlier arguments as to “Why the CLOUD…

Gina Haspel, Torture, and the ProPublica Correction
ProPublica’s comprehensive correction to significant portions of its earlier reporting on Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s recent nominee for CIA Director, provided an…

Follow-Up Questions For Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Trump Campaign on Massive Breach
Late on Friday night, Facebook made a surprising announcement. The company said it was suspending the British firm Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), and its political…

The Unintended “Foreign Agents”
“Foreign agents” are suddenly in our midst – or so it seems. Paul Manafort was indicted, in part, for failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).…

UN Working Group: Indefinite Detention of Gitmo Detainee Violates Human Rights Law
The Jan. 24 findings of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention conclude that the continued detention of Ammar al Baluchi at Guantanamo Bay is arbitrary, discriminatory, and…

“License to Kill” in Salisbury: State-sponsored assassinations and the jus ad bellum
Above: U.K. Ambassador to the U.N. Jonathan Allen speaks at an urgent meeting of the Security Council on the recent nerve agent attack in Salisbury, U.K. on March 14, 2018. (Spencer…

Trump’s Torture Appointees
While Trump’s executive picks have generated considerable publicity due to their support for or history with Bush-era torture and detention policies, his administration’s choices…

Why the CLOUD Act is Good for Privacy and Human Rights
Above: Lawyer Joshua Rosenkranz and Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer of Microsoft, speak to reporters following oral arguments in the U.S. v. Microsoft case at the…

The End of Pretending
Above: President Donald Trump speaks at CIA headquarters. Editors’ note: this article has been updated to reflect the newly-reported fact that Gina Haspel was not in charge…