National Security Agency (NSA)
297 Articles
The CIA’s New Guidelines for Handling Americans’ Information
In acknowledgment of the mass scale of modern electronic intelligence collection, the Central Intelligence Agency today released newly updated guidelines governing how it treats…
“A First Amendment in the Digital Age”—Peter Zenger Lecture
I had the honor of delivering the inaugural Peter Zenger lecture at Columbia Journalism School last week. The lecture is named for a newspaper publisher who was tried for libel…
Correcting the Record on Section 702: A Prerequisite for Meaningful Surveillance Reform, Part III
In our previous posts, we’ve argued that the NSA is collecting massive amounts of data about US citizens under conditions that have nothing to do with terrorism or national…
Correcting the Record on Section 702: A Prerequisite for Meaningful Surveillance Reform, Part II
Last week, we argued that the public discussion surrounding two of the government’s most controversial mass surveillance programs – PRISM and Upstream – has not sufficiently…
No More Snowdens? Start by Reforming the House Intelligence Committee
Last Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) issued a report condemning Edward Snowden and its members unanimously urged President Obama to decline public calls to grant…
Unprecedented and Unlawful: The NSA’s “Upstream” Surveillance
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA) — the statute the government uses to engage in warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications — is scheduled to…
Correcting the Record on Section 702: A Prerequisite for Meaningful Surveillance Reform
The legal authority behind the controversial PRISM and Upstream surveillance programs used by the NSA to collect large swaths of private communications from leading Internet companies…
A Response to “The Tech”: Continuing the Vulnerability Equities Process Debate
In my recent Just Security piece, I argued that Aitel and Tait’s suggestions in Lawfare to focus the Vulnerability Equities Process (VEP) more narrowly on strategic intelligence…
The Vulnerability Equities Process Should Consider More than Intelligence Community Needs
Dave Aitel and Matt Tait’s recent post in Lawfare argued that the U.S. government’s procedure for deciding whether to withhold unknown or little-known vulnerabilities in…
We Shouldn’t Wait Another Fifteen Years for a Conversation About Government Hacking
With high-profile hacks in the headlines and government officials trying to reopen a long-settled debate about encryption, information security has become a mainstream issue. But…
Secret Law, Targeting, and the Problem of Standards: A Response to Dakota Rudesill
In his recent posts and an article, Dakota Rudesill tackles the phenomenon of secret law. Dakota persuasively describes a growing body secret law, which he defines as “legal…
It’s Time to Come to Terms With Secret Law: Part I
Secret law. The words are chilling. They evoke Kafka, unaccountable government, liberty subordinated to state security – and to some ears, perhaps simply the paranoid rantings…