Surveillance
680 Articles
The Muhtorov Constitutional Challenge to Section 702
Jamshid Muhtorov is a lawful permanent U.S. resident and a criminal defendant in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, charged with providing material support to…
Quantum Mechanics, Big Data and the Right of Privacy
If it has done nothing else, the exposure of the NSA metadata collection program has caused both legal commentators and courts to rethink the doctrines that have long governed…
Reforming 702: Does NSA Minimize Cloud Files?
Yesterday, I wrote generally about the problems with section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). Today I want to focus on categories of information—including content—that…
Reforming The Section 702 Dragnet (Part 1)
The consensus is clear that spying on innocent Americans section 215 of the Patriot Act is flatly illegal. The Center for Democracy and Technology said it, Christopher Sprigman…
GCHQ Surveillance Likely Illegal, Says Leading UK Barrister
In yesterday morning’s News Roundup, I noted that a leading lawyer in the UK has submitted legal advice to a parliamentary group concluding that mass surveillance programs conducted…
Don’t Close Your Eyes to Surveillance Dangers: A Response to Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein’s office at the Hoover Institution is less than a mile from mine at Stanford Law School, and I’ve had the pleasure to hear Richard speak to the faculty on a…
Security, Uncertainty, and the National Security Administration: The President Should Defend, Not Revise, Current NSA Procedures
The question of national security and its relationship to individual privacy has always provoked a challenge for persons with strong libertarian inclinations, who rightly embrace…
Lost in the Bulk Collection Debate — Fifth Circuit Affirms Life Sentence of Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari
With most (if not all) the focus these days on bulk collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, Section 702 of FISA, or E.O. 12333, it is easy to forget that foreign intelligence…
Section 215 Telephone Metadata Collection: The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board Trashes Pretty Much Everyone
Wow. There’s really no other way to capture what the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board told the nation today in its 200+ page report on the NSA’s telephone metadata…
Privacy Board Debunks Purported Justification for NSA’s Phone-Records Dragnet
The just-released report of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is rigorous and well-written, and it’s worth reading in its entirety. One section warranting particular…
PCLOB Releases Report, Recommends Government End §215 Program
Today, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) released its report (full text) on the NSA’s bulk telephony metadata collection program under Section 215…
Does “Espionage Porn” Make Us Stronger?
Although they have somewhat different focuses, one can find much in common in recent posts about the continuing byproducts of the Snowden disclosures (including last Friday’s…