Recent Articles

The True Significance of Judge Tatel’s Opinion in the Force-Feeding Appeal
As Wells already flagged over at Lawfare, the D.C. Circuit decided Aamer v. Obama this morning — the effort by some of the Guantánamo detainees to challenge the force-feeding…

Eight Questions PCLOB Should Ask About Section 702
Tomorrow, all five members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about their recent report concluding that…

News Roundup and Notes: February 11, 2014
Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news. Drones The Associated Press…

Office of the DNI Releases List of Permissible Uses of Data Collected in Bulk
If you’ll recall last month, in conjunction with his January 17th speech on U.S. signals intelligence reform, President Obama issued Presidential Policy Directive/PPD-28…

Where’s the “Metadata”?: What Greenwald and Scahill (Don’t) Say about NSA Metadata Collection and Lethal Targeting
There are many, many important revelations about NSA’s involvement in the US drone program in Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill’s historic debut story for First Look…

Lethal Targeting of US Citizens: AP Report Raises More Questions Than Answers
In a highly provocative piece this morning, Kimberly Dozier writes that the Obama administration is weighing another drone strike against a U.S. citizen. That is obviously a…

News Roundup and Notes: February 10, 2014
Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news. Surveillance First Look…

Recap: A Guide to the Past Week’s Posts on Just Security (February 1-7)
I. Surveillance and Data Collection Jennifer Daskal, What the No Fly List Teaches Us About Big Data (Friday, Feb. 7) Shirin Sinnar, Guest Post: A Terrorist Watchlist Error Revealed…

What the No Fly List Teaches Us About Big Data
Shirin beat me to the punch in her excellent discussion of the court’s order in the first-ever no fly list case to be decided on the merits (an issue I previously discussed here).…

A Terrorist Watchlist Error Revealed
Last month, a federal district court for the very first time ordered the government to disclose an individual’s status on the terrorist watchlist. Jennifer Daskal described…

Two Developments re Section 215: (i) Changes to the Section 215 Program and (ii) Program’s Scope is Currently More Limited than Originally Thought
In his speech last month on the U.S. signals intelligence programs, President Obama “directed the Attorney General to work with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court…

Letter to the Editor: Schrödinger’s Metadata
Earlier this week, Charles A. Blanchard floated a provocative idea: “As strange as it may seem, quantum mechanics might help us illuminate the best approach to restrictions on…