Carrie Cordero, Georgetown’s Director of National Security Studies and a former Justice Department official, writes in with this piece on the Boston attacks and possible improvements to our approach to counterterrorism:
If the recent news reports are accurate (a
Peter Margulies of Roger Williams School of Law writes in with the following comments on yesterday’s Clapper decision:
The Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday in Clapper v. Amnesty International reads at first like a substantial narrowing of standing doctrine. However, closer
Carrie Cordero, Georgetown’s Director of National Security Studies and a former Justice Department national security official, writes in with the following thoughts on the FISA Court and its lessons for a possible “Drone Court”:
The debate that has played
Recent events have accelerated a discussion focused around creating a special court to oversee the execution of targeted killings against suspected terrorists. Some Lawfare contributors have weighed in on the idea (see here for Steve’s argument against such a court, … Read more »
There’s been a fair amount of buzz over the past few days centered around the idea of a statutory “drone court”–a tribunal modeled after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that would (presumably) provide at least some modicum of due … Read more »
There is an increasing amount of talk about judicial review for at least some decisions to place specific persons on targeting lists for the use of lethal force outside of a combat zone (drones are not the only platforms that … Read more »
As readers probably already know, the Senate ended an otherwise largely legislation-light 2012 by approving a controversial five-year extension of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), which the House had previously passed in September. President Obama signed the reauthorization … Read more »
I’m sure many of you have become addicted to the TV show, Homeland. Personally, I find it a bit of a bus man’s holiday and rather unrealistic in its characterizations. But in terms of style, I guess taste is … Read more »
The Supreme Court is not the only branch of government focused on FISA. As many Lawfare readers will recall, Congress is currently considering reauthorizing Title VII of FISA, which is scheduled to expire at the end of the … Read more »
Proving once again that the judiciary is the most hardcore of the three branches, the Supreme Court remains open for business this morning. The Justices will hear oral argument in Clapper v. Amnesty International, about whether human rights groups … Read more »
I have refrained so far from commenting on this fascinating article by Cato’s Julian Sanchez—to which Raffaela linked yesterday—which outlines a new theory as to how the crisis developed in 2007 that led to, first, the Protect America Act … Read more »
Carrie Cordero, Georgetown’s Director of National Security Studies and a former Justice Department official, writes in with the following ruminations concerning lone wolf terrorist offenders:
No one really wants to talk about the lone offender.
If the violent events
A big win for the government today in the Ninth Circuit, in a case exploring the impact of FISA’s civil liability provision (50 USC 1810) on sovereign immunity. In a panel opinion written by Judge McKeown and joined … Read more »
Over at the Cato Institute’s Cato@Liberty blog, Julian Sanchez responds to the recent guest post by former Justice Department official Carrie Cordero on FISA Amendments Act reauthorization. Writes Sanchez:
we seem to have at least 13 senators who don’t believe
Over at the Emptywheel blog, Ms. Wheel (aka Marcy Wheeler) has this response to former Justice Department official Carrie Cordero’s guest post of this morning. She notes that Senator Wyden responded at yesterday’s CATO event to one of the … Read more »
Carrie Cordero, Georgetown’s Director of National Security Studies and a former Justice Department official, writes in with the following account of a recent Cato Institute event (which, ahem, would have been on the Lawfare calendar and the good folks … Read more »
Tahawwur Hussain Rana was convicted of providing support to Lashkar e-Taiba (18 USC 2339B) and conspiring to provide support to a group planning to commit murder in Denmark, but was acquitted of conspiring to support the Mumbai terrorist attack of … Read more »
I’ve gotten lots of helpful feedback both on- and offline re: yesterday’s post on Clapper v. Amnesty International, and wanted to write in a bit more detail about (my understanding of) the foreign intelligence surveillance exception to the Fourth … Read more »
In light of the Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari yesterday to review the Second Circuit’s decision in Clapper v. Amnesty International, I thought I’d put together a background post trying to explain why, in my view, Clapper is such … Read more »
Ben noted the non-action on the cert. petitions in the Guantanamo cases (which probably means either that the Justices aren’t sure what to do, or that someone is publishing a dissent from the decision to deny certiorari). The one case … Read more »
As usual, SCOTUSblog has a helpful post summarizing some of the key petitions for certiorari that the Supreme Court’s nine Justices are set to review at their Conference this Friday. I just thought I’d flag it here because two of … Read more »
As promised, Attorney General Holder delivered an address on law and national security today at Northwestern Law. The speech covered an array of topics, including a defense of the legitimacy of military commissions, a strong argument for the importance—from a … Read more »
Friday afternoon, the Obama Administration filed a cert. petition in Clapper v. Amnesty International, the constitutional challenge to 50 U.S.C. § 1881a (added by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008), which authorizes “the targeting of persons reasonably believed to … Read more »
United States v. Mahamud (D. Minn.) is a case involving the prosecution of a man linked to al Shabaab (on charges go conspiring to provide and actually providing material support to that group). On Wednesday, Chief Judge Davis issued a … Read more »
As Raffaella mentioned earlier, the Ninth Circuit released three opinions on Thursday relating to class action litigation against the government and major telecommunications companies (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) for the warrantless wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) under … Read more »
The Congressional Research Service’s Charles Doyle reviews proposals in the 112th Congress to amend National Security Letter authority in this report.
It isn’t every day that a representative of the National Security Agency gives a public speech on the agency’s understanding of “Protecting Civil Liberties in a Cyber Age.” So I thought I would take good notes for Lawfare readers on … Read more »
The other day, Bobby posted a link to the the Second Circuit’s recent decision in Amnesty International v. Clapper, a case holding that plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of provisions in the 2008 FISA Amendments Act (“FAA”) had standing to … Read more »
* Amnesty International, et al. v. Clapper, et al. (2d Cir. Mar. 21, 2011) (reversing grant of summary judgment to government in FISA Amendments Act challenge)
The plaintiffs in this suit are a mix of individuals and groups relating to … Read more »
Thanks to Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News for linking to these new CRS reports:
Brookings has just released a paper I have been working on with two coauthors on rationalizing government collection authorities for data held in the hands of third parties. The paper, entitled “Rationalizing Government Collection Authorities: A Proposal for Radical … Read more »
I’m a little bit grouchy that the argument I made in this speech I keep linking to isn’t more a part of the debate over continuity and change between the Bush and Obama administrations than it is. It’s not just … Read more »
The New York Times has, for the second time, glibly proposed establishing a new court to authorize killing people. In an editorial today–I am not making this up–the paper publishes a detailed two-sentence road-map for this modest addendum to Article … Read more »
A piece in today’s Washington Post opens with the claim that the government has been caught up in illegal surveillance: “The federal government has repeatedly violated legal limits governing the surveillance of U.S. citizens . . . .” The piece … Read more »
Representative Peter King has urged the State Department to consider designating Wikileaks a “foreign terrorist organization,” which among other things would implicate 18 USC 2339B (the 1996 material support statute, criminalizing the provision of any form of support or resources … Read more »
Another interesting hypothetical raised by the Wikileaks situation is whether Wikileaks counts as a “foreign power” for purposes of FISA. 50 USC 1801(a) defines “foreign power” as any of the following:
United States v. Kashmiri, a recent decision by a district judge in Illinois, provides a nice illustration of the process by which defendants in criminal cases may object to the admission of evidence derived from Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act … Read more »
The Al Aulaqi argument today was long—far too long for me to write a blow-by-blow account of the entire session. It went on for three hours, and I had to duck out just before it ended. Even a brief summary … Read more »
Marc Ambinder reports that the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, gave his first speech as DNI on the subject of “domestic intelligence” (at an event on that topic sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the national security-oriented arm … Read more »
Steve Aftergood at Secrecy News responds to the views of Greg McNeal and Marc Ambinder on the significance of proposed changes to FISC Rules of Procedure. Steve thinks the problem identified by Greg and Marc was not intended. If that’s … Read more »
Greg McNeal has a very useful post regarding a potentially-important change contained in the proposed amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. I’d glanced at them and not noticed it; nice catch Greg!
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
In one of the strangest stories I’ve come across in a long time—and there have been many—news reports say an FBI agent shot and killed an Orlando man with ties to deceased Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Ibragim Todashev was not suspected of playing a role in the bombings, but, during questioning, confessed nevertheless to playing a role in a triple homicide in the Boston area. After his confession, Todashev allegedly… Read more »
