Counterterrorism
489 Articles
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…
Reforming The Section 702 Dragnet (Part 1)
The consensus is clear that spying on innocent Americans section 215 of the Patriot Act is flatly illegal. The Center for Democracy and Technology said it, Christopher Sprigman…
First “Public” PRB Hearing Raises More Questions Than it Answers
As expected, today’s Periodic Review Board hearing, the first so-called “public” one of these events, was completely uneventful. In the case of Abdel Malik Ahmed Abdel…
Quasi-public Guantanamo Detainee Hearings Start Tomorrow
On Tuesday morning, select members of the media and human rights groups will, for the first time, be allowed to observe a portion of a Periodic Review Board hearing for a detainee…
Counterterrorism Under the Radar: A Notable No Fly List Case and its Broader Implications
Amidst all the discussion of the President’s speech on surveillance (and the PCLOB Report on the same subject), the release of Robert Gates’ memoir, and the discovery of horrific…
Helpful Resource from the Dept of Defense: Periodic Review Board Website
We wanted to flag for interested readers a helpful resource, the Department of Defense’s website for the Periodic Review Secretariat (PRS), the body responsible for the administrative…
Prediction: Fourth Amendment Evolves in 2014
When should courts follow legal precedent and when should the law change? This is a debate that underlies this month’s contrary decisions about the constitutionality of government…
Can §215 Be Used for Content Collection?
At this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the National Security Agency’s surveillance authorities, Sen. Patrick Leahy posed a crucial question to the government’s…
A Review of the Special Rapporteur Reports Regarding “Drones” and the Use of Lethal Force
Background The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Mr Christof Heyns, recently reported on the topic of the use of lethal force through armed…
Sixth-Month Anniversary of the President’s NDU Speech
Today marks the six-month anniversary of President Obama’s now-famous speech at the National Defense University on May 23, 2013. In his speech, the President described…
Equating Terrorism and Bubonic Plague: Bad for Counterterrorism, Bad for the Constitution
If I were Al Qaeda’s director of propaganda and managed to infiltrate an agent into the American judiciary, I’d want him to exaggerate the terrorist threat and then leverage…