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The Fine Line Between Collective Self-Defense and Intervention by Invitation: Reflections on the Use of Force against ‘IS’ in Syria
Bashar and Asma al-Assad. Image credit: Ricardo Stuckert/ABr via Wikimedia Commons. [Editor’s Note from Ryan Goodman: With the U.S. Congress turning its attention to an…

Guest Post: US Intelligence Reforms Still Allow Plenty of Suspicionless Spying on Americans
Last week, the Obama Administration released a report and documents cataloging progress toward signals intelligence (SIGINT) reform goals set a year ago by the President in a document…

Key Questions for Today’s Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing With Nicholas Rasmussen
Sen Richard Burr (R-NC), the new chair of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, has announced that he plans to hold a public committee hearing this afternoon. This is welcome…

Don’t Overvalue a Sunset in the AUMF: Start Talking About the Conditions When Wars Could End
More than six months after American bombs started falling in Iraq and Syria, President Barack Obama has finally submitted his proposal for authorizing the military campaign targeting…

Surveillance and the Vanishing Right to Know
Editor’s Note: This post offers a preview of the authors’ upcoming article in the Santa Clara Law Review: The Notice Paradox: Secret Surveillance, Criminal Defendants…

The US Should Not Rush to Arm Ukraine
Last weekend, a group of think tanks led by the Brookings Institution began to preview their upcoming report on why it is time for the US to arm Ukraine in its conflict with Russia…

Torture and the CIA’s Unaccountability Boards
Last Saturday, January 31, CIA Inspector General David Buckley resigned after a little more than four years in office. His departure came at the end of the same month his office…

International Comity Run Amok
Late last year, a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Mujica v. Airscan Inc., a human rights suit against two U.S. corporations for involvement…

Homeland Insecurity: Checkpoints, Warrantless Searches and Security Theater
Since June 2013, the American public, press, and policy-makers have been debating the implications of Edward Snowden’s disclosures of mass U.S. government surveillance programs,…

Five Important Questions About DEA’s Vehicle Surveillance Program
With each week, we seem to learn about a new government location tracking program. This time, it’s the expanded use of license plate readers. According to the Wall Street Journal, relying…

Members Only: Al Qaeda’s Charter List Revealed After 13 Years in US Hands
A fascinating bit of evidence about al Qaeda’s early days emerged yesterday during the trial of alleged al Qaeda operative Khaled al-Fawwaz – what federal prosecutors call…

You Should Care About Mutual Legal Assistance More Than You Do
About a year ago, I wrote here that the mutual legal assistance (MLA) regime – the legal system that regulates government-to-government requests for evidence in criminal investigations,…