Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
253 Articles

Revelations From the Newly Declassified FISC Opinion on Section 702
Last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified several Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinions from 2015. One opinion from November…

The FBI’s Warrantless Surveillance Back Door Just Opened a Little Wider
On Tuesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a redacted version of an opinion by Judge Thomas F. Hogan of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance…

The Obama Administration Has Embraced Legal Theories Even Broader Than John Yoo’s
The Justice Department recently released another of the now-notorious Office of Legal Counsel memos written by John Yoo — memos that authorized torture, warrantless wiretapping,…

Law Enforcement Online: Innovative Doesn’t Mean Illegal
Even the Wild West needed a sheriff. And today’s law enforcement agents, to be effective, need more than a Colt .45 and a gold star. Criminal actors have an increasing ability…

Questions Congress Should Ask About Section 702
After passing a surveillance reform bill last year, Congress appears poised to turn to examine another controversial surveillance authority — Section 702 of FISA. Using Section…

Congress Squawks as Surveillance Chickens Come Home to Roost
A year that has alternated between major surveillance reforms and calls for new spying laws in the wake of ISIS attacks is set to close with a pendulum swing back against NSA surveillance…

Why Aren’t Criminal Defendants Getting Notice of Section 702 Surveillance — Again?
Since the Snowden disclosures began, the government’s massive surveillance operations under Section 702 of FISA have increasingly drawn public scrutiny. Section 702 is the authority…

Bulk Collection Under Section 215 Has Ended… What’s Next?
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…

Section 702, the Fourth Amendment, and Article III: The Muhtorov (Non-)Decision
Because of the difficulties civil litigants have encountered in challenging section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (as created by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008),…

Safe Harbor and Reforming Section 702
Having only belatedly caught up on the European Court of Justice’s Safe Harbor decision, I wanted to weigh in on the excellent discussion between Tim Edgar and Peter Margulies…

Does CISA Contain a Surveillance Law XSS Attack?
Skeptical concerns about the proposed Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act have, thus far, tended to fall into two main categories: Doubts about efficacy—most actual practitioners…

The Declining Half-Life of Secrets
Image credit: US Government via Wikimedia Commons The following post is a preview of a new paper from New America’s Cybersecurity Initiative, where the author is a fellow.…