Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
263 Articles
2014 Congressional Midterms and Surveillance Reform: Races to Watch
This is the first of two posts discussing the future of surveillance reform after the 2014 midterms. The second post is available here. The high water mark for NSA reforms in the…
Shhh! Last Week Was All About Secrets
Editors’ Note: The following post is the sixth installment of a new feature, “Monday Reflections,” in which a different Just Security editor will take an in-depth look…
Twitter’s First Amendment Suit & the Warrant-Canary Question
This week, Twitter lobbed the latest volley in what has been both a fascinating and encouraging repositioning of technology companies vis-à-vis the U.S. government—a pivot that…
Clapper, Adobe, and Article III Standing for Surveillance Harms
A recent decision from a federal court in the Northern District of California has added a new and interesting chapter to the decades-long saga of Article III standing in privacy…
It’s Time to Pass the USA Freedom Act—Warts and All
Thirteen years after 9/11, the United States Congress appeared poised to begin the long overdue process of reining-in the intelligence establishment’s runaway surveillance practices.…
The Need for Both Legal and Technical Privacy Protections
Last week, Apple and Google came under intense criticism from the law enforcement and national security communities for their decisions to encrypt user data when devices are locked.…
FISC OKs Section 215 Investigations of Americans, Despite First Amendment
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court declassified an opinion today which, although highly redacted, illuminates the way at least one Judge is interpreting his mandate to…
Intercept Reporting Raises Broader Metadata Minimization Question
Does the NSA minimize Americans metadata? Today’s reporting by the Intercept calls into question whether the NSA minimizes so-called metadata relating to Americans’ digital…
Judge Bates (Unintentionally) Makes the Case for FISC Reform
Whatever one thinks of the Senate version of the USA FREEDOM Act–which offers a series of substantive and procedural reforms to U.S. surveillance programs–it is now…
Updated developments regarding FAA Section 702 and related matters
I’ve published a couple of posts here tracking some of the more important recent developments respecting Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This post is an…
All The Pieces Matter: Bulk(y) Collection Under §702
In a recent guest post, Chairman David Medine of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight board gamely responds to several questions about §702 surveillance posed by my co-blogger…
Why (Some) Secrecy is Good for Civil Liberties
A few weeks back, Ben Wittes wrote a controversial post over at Lawfare on the latest Snowden disclosures, arguing that, “If you’re okay with dumping in the lap of a journalist…