Patriot Act
74 Articles
Talking About Section 215: A Readers’ Guide
Media coverage of John Oliver’s critique about the lack of discussion surrounding government surveillance programs seems to prove his point. Much, if not most, of the attention…
Whither the Section 215 Reauthorization Debate?
Remember section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act — and the bulk telephone records metadata program the government conducted pursuant a controversial interpretation of that authority?…
US Government Makes Slight Concession in Twitter’s Warrant-Canary Suit
The US government last week conceded for the first time that some companies have the right to publish so called “warrant canaries” in a new filing supporting its partial motion…
A Terrorist Conspiracy Via Email
On April 3, 2009, Abid Naseer, a 22-year-old Pakistani student, sat in front of his computer in his Manchester, England, apartment and drafted an email to his al-Qaeda handler…
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…
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 Newest Reforms on SIGINT Collection Still Leave Loopholes
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper this morning released a report detailing new rules aimed at reforming the way signals intelligence is collected and stored by certain…
There Will Be Surveillance Reform
How should we understand the Senate’s failure to pass the USA Freedom Act on Tuesday? I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure it’s misguided to propose, as Steve Vladeck did…
National Security Politics in the 114th Congress
Last September, I wrote a post exploring whether some of the congressional reactions to the Snowden disclosures might have been portents of a coming political realignment on national…
A Republican Senate Takeover Won’t Doom Surveillance Reform
Late on the evening of May 29, 2014, California Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D) called a small, bipartisan group of lawmakers to her office in the Longworth Building on the Capitol Hill campus.…
2014 Congressional Midterms and Surveillance Reform: Races to Watch
This is the first of two posts discussing the future of surveillance reform after the 2014 midterms. The second post is available here. The high water mark for NSA reforms in the…
Renewed focus on statutory construction in the Section 215 litigation
C-SPAN videotaped Tuesday’s oral argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in ACLU v. Clapper, one of the primary challenges to the Section 215 telephony…