Surveillance
680 Articles
Does the Intelligence Community Fear Lawyers…or Legal Scrutiny?
[Editor’s Note: See Marshall Erwin’s response to General Dunlap here.] In a provocatively entitled essay, Are National Security Lawyers a National Security Threat?…
Eleventh Circuit Says No to Warrantless Cell Tracking, Calls Other Metadata Programs Into Question
Today, the Eleventh Circuit rejected the exceedingly common law enforcement practice of warrantlessly tracking suspects’ physical location using cell phone tower data. The opinion,…
SSCI Holds Hearing on USA FREEDOM Act
Happening now the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) is holding an open hearing on the House passed USA FREEDOM Act (H.R. 3361). For previous reaction to the House…
Is Edward Snowden Engaged in Civil Disobedience? —A Response to Glennon
In his recent post, “Is Snowden Obliged to Accept Punishment?,” Michael Glennon takes on Edward Snowden’s critics who argue that the former contractor’s unwillingness to…
Is Snowden Obliged to Accept Punishment?
This is Secretary of State John Kerry’s answer, given May 28 on CBS This Morning: “He should man up, come back to the United States. If he has a complaint about what’s…
FAA Section 702 developments
Back in February, I posted about the first brief on the merits challenging the constitutionality of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, in the criminal case against…
Why We Can’t Support the New USA FREEDOM Act
[Editor’s Note: Just Security has been closely following the congressional proposals, including the USA FREEDOM Act, introduced in recent months aimed to curb the administration’s surveillance authorities.…
USA Freedom Act: Oh, Well. Whatever. Nevermind.
The initially promising USA Freedom Act could have ended the previously secret government practices of collecting Americans’ calling records, internet transactional information…
The “Culture of Misinformation” and the Government’s Representations to the Supreme Court in Clapper
In yesterday’s New York Times, Charlie Savage had a new installment in his series about the government’s representations (and misrepresentations) in Clapper v. Amnesty, a…
USA FREEDOM: How Many Hops?
Last week’s surprisingly rapid approval of the USA FREEDOM Act by two crucial House committees cheered civil libertarians, even if some of the compromises required to move…
Collect It All!: Newly Released NSA Documents Reveal Omnivorous Appetite for our Private Data
No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald’s inside account of the most significant leak of classified information in American history, is out today. I offer a mixed review of the book…
Video Clip of Former Director of NSA and CIA: “We Kill People Based on Metadata”
In a public debate with Just Security‘s David Cole at Johns Hopkins University, former Director of the NSA and CIA, General Michael Hayden made the provocative remark, “We…