Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
253 Articles
FAA Section 702 developments
Back in February, I posted about the first brief on the merits challenging the constitutionality of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, in the criminal case against…
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…
The “Culture of Misinformation” and the Government’s Representations to the Supreme Court in Clapper
In yesterday’s New York Times, Charlie Savage had a new installment in his series about the government’s representations (and misrepresentations) in Clapper v. Amnesty, a…
Michael Hayden: “We Kill People Based on Metadata”
[Editor’s note: See the video clip from the debate where General Hayden said “We kill people based on metadata” here.] I have a New York Review of Books blog up today on…
New Editors’ Picks Reading List: IHRL on Privacy and Surveillance
As regular readers will likely recall, in recent weeks there has been much discussion here on the pages of Just Security (and elsewhere) on important questions regarding the extraterritorial…
John Bellinger’s Testimony before the PCLOB (and implications for Senate approval of the Persons with Disabilities Convention) [Updated on April 2]
My friend and former legal adviser to the State Department John Bellinger recently testified before the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board (PCLOB) on the question whether international…
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…
UN Human Rights Committee Says ICCPR Applies to Extraterritorial Surveillance: But is that so novel?
[Editor’s Note: John Bellinger over at Lawfare replied to the following post. And Ryan has a new post, partly in response to John.] A major development in today’s UN Human…
PCLOB Hearing on Section 702 Authorities
Today, the PLCOB is holding a hearing on programs authorized under Section 702 of FISA. The hearing can be watched live on C-SPAN2. Written testimony of the witnesses is linked…
How President Obama can fulfill his promise to end bulk collection of telephone metadata, while preserving intelligence capabilities
On January 17, President Obama promised to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of metadata on Americans’ phone calls under “section 215” (which is really…
The Elephant in the Room: The FBI
Commissions, oversight boards, and review groups are all the rage these days. Recent weeks have seen hundreds of pages of reports evaluating American intelligence agencies, and…
Who Watches the Watchers?–A Rejoinder to Steve Vladeck
I am grateful for Steve’s careful response to my post, “Democratic Platitudes,” which examined his original post, “Does Espionage Porn Make Us Stronger?” Having benefited…