Surveillance
680 Articles

The UK Draft Investigatory Powers Bill (aka, the Revised “Snooper’s Charter”)
Earlier this month the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, the UK Government’s attempt to legitimize State surveillance powers, was presented to Parliament. Depending on your perspective,…

The Government Should Stop Rewarding Bad Policies for Police Body Cameras
Body cameras have major potential to increase police accountability. However, without informed policies governing their use, they might not only fail in this goal, they could actually…

Section 702, the Fourth Amendment, and Article III: The Muhtorov (Non-)Decision
Because of the difficulties civil litigants have encountered in challenging section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (as created by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008),…

Is the FBI Using Zero-Days in Criminal Investigations?
We have known for a while now that the FBI uses hacking techniques to conduct remote computer searches in criminal investigations — particularly those that involve the dark web.…

The Wiretap Spike at Facebook: WhatsApp With That?
Vice’s Motherboard is puzzling over a massive leap in the number of Title III wiretap orders served on Facebook during the first half of 2015: A whopping 201 (targeting 259 users)…

The Legal Legacy of the NSA’s Section 215 Bulk Collection Program
Last week’s opinion in Klayman v. Obama by Judge Richard Leon dealt another, emphatic(!) blow to the constitutionality of the NSA’s bulk phone record surveillance program under…

11/13/15
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…

Judge Leon’s Poignant, Yet Pointless, Injunction in Klayman
A long time 12 days ago, I wrote a post sharply criticizing the Second Circuit for deciding not to decide the Fourth Amendment question in ACLU v. Clapper, which arises from the…

Power Wars Symposium: Surveillance, Individual Rights, and the Obama Administration
Editor’s Note: This is the latest entry in a symposium Just Security is hosting in conjunction with this week’s release of Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency by…

Reminder: Tech Firms Aren’t Always the Privacy Advocates We’d Like to Think They Are
Last weekend, news broke that Facebook had been informally lobbying lawmakers to let them know the company didn’t oppose the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA). The…

Orin Kerr’s Unconvincing Defense of Yesterday’s Second Circuit (Non-)Ruling
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, my friend Orin Kerr has a thoughtful post up about yesterday’s Second Circuit decision in ACLU v. Clapper, which refused to enjoin the…

Section 215 and “Fruitless” (?!?) Constitutional Adjudication
This morning, the Second Circuit issued a follow-on ruling to its May decision in ACLU v. Clapper (which had held that the NSA’s bulk telephone records program was unlawful…