4th Amendment
176 Articles
Can §215 Be Used for Content Collection?
At this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the National Security Agency’s surveillance authorities, Sen. Patrick Leahy posed a crucial question to the government’s…
Latest Snowden Documents Show NSA Tracks Americans’ Cell Location Data
Today’s Washington Post report that the National Security Agency (NSA) is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world should light…
The FISC’s Problematic Pen/Trap Opinion on Bulk Internet Metadata Collection
The latest round of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions released under the Freedom of Information Act includes what, for many surveillance wonks, has been the white…
Hearing in Another Surveillance Challenge Today
In previous posts I’ve discussed filings in the two most prominent challenges to the government’s “Telephony Records Program.” Things are moving along…
Making Sense of the NSA Metadata Collection Program (Part II)
In a previous post here on Just Security, I discussed the constitutionality of the National Security Agency (NSA) program that sweeps up detailed “metadata” pertaining to essentially…
Live Feed of HPSCI Hearing on Potential Changes to FISA [Update: hearing now complete]
[Update (5:15 pm): The HPSCI Hearing on Potential Changes to FISA is now complete. Recorded video of the hearing testimony is provided below in two parts, due to the length of…
We All Go Down Together: NSA Programs Overseas Violate Americans’ Privacy, Yet Escape FISC, Congressional Oversight
Ongoing revelations show that significant NSA surveillance activities take place outside of either Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) or congressional oversight, even…
Al-Liby: Male Captus, Bene Detentus?
Further to Marty’s post today on the question of Libya’s consent vel non to the recent al-Liby operation, we should also call attention to a long-withheld OLC opinion (13 U.S.…
“Relevance” at the Royale Inn
The NSA’s controversial call records program is predicated on the extraordinary premise that the phone logs of nearly all Americans are “relevant” to an intelligence…
New NSA Reform Proposal from Sen. Leahy and Rep. Sensenbrenner
While the continued government shutdown has sidelined an estimated 800,000 federal employees and resulted in the cancellation of President Obama’s trip to Asia this weekend,…
Recent Filings in Case Challenging NSA metadata program (ACLU v. Clapper)
Earlier this summer the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s collection of telephony metadata under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. This is one…
NSA Bulk Collection, the “Corporate Store,” and the Forgotten ECPA Loophole
This weekend’s New York Times report on NSA aggregation of large databases to map the social networks of US citizens contains a reminder that the vast bulk phone records…