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Sting Operations and Counterterrorism: What’s Really at Stake?
Attorney General Eric Holder was in Europe last week, touting the virtues of American-style counter-terrorism, including the prominent use of stings operations against would-be…

The PCLOB Report and Eight Questions About Section 702
Note: The views expressed below are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of PCLOB or its other Board members. On July 2, Professor Jennifer Granick posed the question:…

The Illusion of Justice report and the Use of “Radicalization Theories” in Counterterrorism Sting Operations
[Tarek Z. Ismail is co-author of Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions, a report co-published by Human Rights Watch and the Columbia Law School…

Would the USA Freedom Act End All Authorities for Bulk Collection?
When the House passed the USA Freedom Act (H.R. 3361) in May, both Members and the administration announced that it would end bulk collection of metadata about Americans’…

Beyond the US-German Case: Understanding the Espionage “Rules of the Game”
As a former Chief of Europe Division in the CIA, I have no comment to offer concerning the Germany espionage flap, of which I know nothing, save for what I have read in the press.…

New Court Orders Signal More Drone Documents Are on the Way
For more than four years of Freedom of Information Act litigation concerning the government’s targeted-killing program, the government managed to avoid releasing a single document…

Autonomy, “Killer Robots,” and Human Control in the Use of Force – Part II
[Editor’s Note: This is Part II of a two-part guest post from Paul Scharre, a fellow and Project Director for the 20YY Warfare Initiative at the Center for a New American…

Autonomy, “Killer Robots,” and Human Control in the Use of Force – Part I
[Editor’s Note: This is Part I of a two-part guest post from Paul Scharre, a fellow and Project Director for the 20YY Warfare Initiative at the Center for a New American…

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An unfortunate story on the non-review of U.S. surveillance authority in Section 702
Federal oversight agency punts on international human rights, while findings the programs lawful and constitutional The President’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (“PCLOB”)…

A Response to General Dunlap
First a caveat—I have worked with many honorable national security law experts who do exceptional scholarship and whose perspective I find extremely valuable, just as I have…

Does the Intelligence Community Fear Lawyers…or Legal Scrutiny?
[Editor’s Note: See Marshall Erwin’s response to General Dunlap here.] In a provocatively entitled essay, Are National Security Lawyers a National Security Threat?…

Riley v. California — An Important Step Forward, but How Far Forward?
The joined cases of Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie rightly have been hailed as a ringing endorsement of privacy in the digital age. By holding that police may…