Domestic Surveillance
295 Articles
Five Important Questions About DEA’s Vehicle Surveillance Program
With each week, we seem to learn about a new government location tracking program. This time, it’s the expanded use of license plate readers. According to the Wall Street Journal, relying…
OHCHR Call for Comments on Encryption and Anonymity Online
David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on protection and promotion of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has issued a call for submission of information related to…
The Latest Rules on How Long NSA Can Keep Americans’ Encrypted Data Look Too Familiar
Does the National Security Agency (NSA) have the authority to collect and keep all encrypted Internet traffic for as long as is necessary to decrypt that traffic? That was a question…
Decrypting John Boehner on the Capitol Bomb Plotter
An Ohio man was recently charged with plotting to blow up the U.S. Captiol, and House Speaker John Boehner appears to be claiming that the NSA’s controversial bulk telephony…
US Government Seeks to Deny Twitter’s “Warrant Canary” Challenge
On Friday, the Justice Department asked a federal district court to brush away a lawsuit filed in October by Twitter seeking greater freedom to publicly report on the numbers and…
In 2007, One Judge Said No to the NSA
Last week, the government quietly released a new cache of court filings and orders from late 2006 and early 2007 that together reveal a watershed moment in the government’s effort…
Guest Post: Intelligence Legalism and the Torture Report
As I was reading the SSCI’s torture report last week, my mind went back to two Just Security posts last month (here and here), in which I argued that the U.S. Intelligence Community…
Guest Post: NSA Reform — The Consequences of Failure
If you were expecting this to be a detailed post-mortem on the demise of the USA Freedom Act, you will be disappointed. As others have covered that ground, I want to focus on the…
Takeaways from the House Intelligence Committee Cybersecurity Hearing
On Thursday morning, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a hearing on “Cybersecurity Threats: The Way Forward,” featuring testimony by Adm. Michael Rogers,…
There Will Be Surveillance Reform
How should we understand the Senate’s failure to pass the USA Freedom Act on Tuesday? I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure it’s misguided to propose, as Steve Vladeck did…
The FBI Doesn’t Need More Access: We’re Already in the Golden Age of Surveillance
This post comes in advance of this afternoon’s debate between Just Security contributors Andrew Weissmann and Peter Swire about Law Enforcement vs. SmartPhone Encryption at…
The Surveillance State’s Legalism Isn’t About Morals, It’s About Manipulating the Rules
Margo Schlanger has written a great article forthcoming in the Harvard National Security Journal about intelligence legalism, an ethical framework she sees underlying NSA surveillance.…