Surveillance

There has been a lot of ink spilled here and elsewhere about the USA Freedom Act over the last several weeks. Its privacy protections. Its alterations to the government’s surveillance…

This afternoon, Congress, for the first time since 9/11, reined in national security surveillance authorities.  It’s a historic moment, and a great victory for civil liberties,…

Because the gods of traffic metrics are stern taskmasters, you’ll likely read a lot of headlines today about “the expiration of the Patriot Act,” possibly paired…

As a nerdy follow-up to the stories about last night’s expiration of section 215, I thought I’d say a quick word about how that denouement will affect the ongoing litigation…

It’s great that the sunset of Section 215 has reignited the debate about mass surveillance in the United States, but all the focus on this one provision, more specifically on…

The Senate entered its Memorial Day recess without passing either a Patriot Act extension or a reform bill along the lines of the Freedom Act. Amid intense congressional wrangling…

The Capitol Dome. Image Credit: Architect of the Capitol. In a last-ditch effort to scare lawmakers into preserving unpopular and much-abused surveillance authorities, the Senate…

Senator Rand Paul, joined by Senator Wyden and other surveillance reform advocates, as well as five members of the House of Representatives, spent much of last night on the Senate…

Late last month Der Spiegel reported that the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, participated in and directly supported the National Security…

Last week’s dramatic Second Circuit decision in ACLU v. Clapper, invalidated the alleged legal basis for the NSA domestic phone call dragnet, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act,…

A ratchet is a device that employs mechanical impediments to allow movement in only one direction. As such, it is a useful metaphor for national security policy, where restrictive…

In the excitement over the Second Circuit’s ruling on the NSA’s bulk collection program, another very significant appellate decision that was issued last week has been largely…