Domestic Surveillance
295 Articles
The Illusion of Justice report and the Use of “Radicalization Theories” in Counterterrorism Sting Operations
[Tarek Z. Ismail is co-author of Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions, a report co-published by Human Rights Watch and the Columbia Law School…
Would the USA Freedom Act End All Authorities for Bulk Collection?
When the House passed the USA Freedom Act (H.R. 3361) in May, both Members and the administration announced that it would end bulk collection of metadata about Americans’…
DOJ Files Opening Brief in Klayman Appeal
It’s been some time since we’ve discussed developments related to the Section 215 telephony metadata program. More attention of late has been focused on Section 702…
Eleventh Circuit Says No to Warrantless Cell Tracking, Calls Other Metadata Programs Into Question
Today, the Eleventh Circuit rejected the exceedingly common law enforcement practice of warrantlessly tracking suspects’ physical location using cell phone tower data. The opinion,…
SSCI Holds Hearing on USA FREEDOM Act
Happening now the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) is holding an open hearing on the House passed USA FREEDOM Act (H.R. 3361). For previous reaction to the House…
Why We Can’t Support the New USA FREEDOM Act
[Editor’s Note: Just Security has been closely following the congressional proposals, including the USA FREEDOM Act, introduced in recent months aimed to curb the administration’s surveillance authorities.…
USA Freedom Act: Oh, Well. Whatever. Nevermind.
The initially promising USA Freedom Act could have ended the previously secret government practices of collecting Americans’ calling records, internet transactional information…
House Judiciary Markup of USA Freedom Act (Live stream)
Today starting at 1pm, the House Judiciary Committee is beginning its markup of the USA Freedom Act (H.R. 3361), including the Manager’s Amendment about which Jennifer…
Manager’s Amendment Puts Back Door Searches Back In USA Freedom Act
Yesterday, the stagnant USA Freedom Act started to move through the U.S. House of Representatives, starting with a Manager’s Amendment to the bill. According to its drafters,…
White House Makes Reassuring Noises On 0-Day Policy
Yesterday afternoon, the White House put out a statement describing its view of vulnerability disclosure: the contentious issue of whether and when government agencies should disclose…
Getting Under the Hood of the HPSCI Bulk Collection Bill
While details on the president’s proposal to end NSA bulk collection of telephony records remain sparse, we do now have an actual piece of legislation to look at from the…
The Extraterritorial Right to Privacy: An Opportunity to Impact the Debate
A codicil to our ongoing discussion of the human rights implications of foreign and mass surveillance (see prior posts by Ryan Goodman (here and here), Philip Alston, Jennifer…