Section 215
62 Articles
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…
FISC OKs Section 215 Investigations of Americans, Despite First Amendment
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court declassified an opinion today which, although highly redacted, illuminates the way at least one Judge is interpreting his mandate to…
DOJ Files Opening Brief in Klayman Appeal
It’s been some time since we’ve discussed developments related to the Section 215 telephony metadata program. More attention of late has been focused on Section 702…
Some Questions About the President’s Phone-Records Proposal
In the New York Times, Charlie Savage reports that the administration intends to propose legislation that would end the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records. The legislation…
An End to Dragnet Surveillance?
The New York Times report that President Obama will call for an end to the bulk collection of American’s telephone metadata is yet further vindication for Edward Snowden in particular,…
President Obama Will Seek to Curb (End?) Section 215 Bulk Collection
In a story being reported this evening by Charlie Savage of The New York Times, it appears that President Obama is preparing to announce a legislative proposal that will seek…
How President Obama can fulfill his promise to end bulk collection of telephone metadata, while preserving intelligence capabilities
On January 17, President Obama promised to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of metadata on Americans’ phone calls under “section 215” (which is really…
Information Cascades and Intelligence Oversight
Sen. Blumenthal opened a recent surveillance oversight hearing by hammering an important point from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s thorough report on the…
Eight Questions PCLOB Should Ask About Section 702
Tomorrow, all five members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about their recent report concluding that…