Recent Articles
A $15 Million Dollar Torture Partnership
It has been common knowledge for a while that Poland hosted a secret CIA prison where Abd al Rahim al Nashiri and other prisoners now held in Guantánamo were detained and tortured. …
News Roundup and Notes: January 24, 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. NSA Surveillance The White…
Section 215 Telephone Metadata Collection: The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board Trashes Pretty Much Everyone
Wow. There’s really no other way to capture what the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board told the nation today in its 200+ page report on the NSA’s telephone metadata…
Privacy Board Debunks Purported Justification for NSA’s Phone-Records Dragnet
The just-released report of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is rigorous and well-written, and it’s worth reading in its entirety. One section warranting particular…
An Inauspicious Anniversary: It’s Time to Release the Report of the Special Interagency Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies
Yesterday was the five-year anniversary of President Obama’s Executive Order 13491 on ensuring lawful interrogations. The Order, one of the first acts of the Obama administration,…
PCLOB Releases Report, Recommends Government End §215 Program
Today, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) released its report (full text) on the NSA’s bulk telephony metadata collection program under Section 215…
Does “Espionage Porn” Make Us Stronger?
Although they have somewhat different focuses, one can find much in common in recent posts about the continuing byproducts of the Snowden disclosures (including last Friday’s…
News Roundup and Notes: January 23, 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. NSA Surveillance The Privacy…
Balancing the Public Interest in Disclosures
On Monday, Marc Theissen had an opinion piece in the Washington Post taking The New York Times to task for publishing the details of the NSA’s capabilities of using radio…
Jack Goldsmith on the “Front-Page Rule”
Highly recommended. As I explained earlier, I think this is a very important question going forward.
Understanding What it Means to be “Approved for Transfer”: A Response to Lawrence Rosenthal
Lawrence Rosenthal argues below that the Executive lacks any AUMF authority to continue to detain GTMO detainees who have either been approved for transfer by the GTMO Review Task…
General Stanley McChrystal Discusses the Downsides of Drones
In an interview with BBC Radio 4, General Stanley McChrystal, the retired commander of forces in Afghanistan, stated his general view that the use of drones will and should increase.…