[Editor's Note: below you'll find a fourth and final post in our series by David Kris, on possible reforms to surveillance statutes. The first post, an introduction, can be found here; two posts, on current challenges and a … Read more »
[Editor's Note: below you'll find the third in a series of posts by David Kris on surveillance reform. In the first two installments, David introduced his subject, and then overviewed the challenges facing an attempt to overhaul the legal … Read more »
[Editor's Note: this is the second in a series of four posts by David Kris, on large-scale surveillance reform. The first, an introduction, can be found here. Below, David discusses the challenges facing any "blue-sky" overhaul.]
A blue-sky overhaul, while … Read more »
[Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of four posts, in which David S. Kris discusses the possibility of wide-ranging reform to U.S. surveillance law.]
A paper I wrote for Ben Wittes a few years ago discussed … Read more »
The dictionary defines a “kris” as “a Malayan and Indonesian stabbing or slashing knife with a scalloped edge.” On this site, however, The Way of the Kris is not some new Mark Mazzetti book about Obama administration counterterrorism … Read more »
Carrie Cordero, Georgetown’s Director of National Security Studies and a former Justice Department official, writes in with these thoughts on the AP subpoenas controversy and background law:
In light of the hysteria over reports that the Department of Justice
Earlier today I posted a commentary on “Boston Bombings: Local Police and Counterterrorism Intelligence,” based on reported claims that the FBI failed to pass on important threat information to the Boston Police Department, and further reported claims that … Read more »
One of the fun parts of working in the cybersecurity field is that you often come across new technology that is interesting, dismaying, disturbing or just plain cool. Sometimes the technology is all of those at the same time. And … Read more »
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
A very interesting post on the New York Times‘s FiveThirtyEight blog argues that, while Americans think future terrorist attacks are likely, they’re also increasingly “skeptical about sacrificing personal freedoms for security.” A Fox News poll right after 9/11 found … Read more »
Lawfare‘s crack team of contributors has been busy invading The Huffington Post. Hot on the heels of Susan and Ritika’s excellent backgrounder on Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan, I’ve posted an article arguing that it’s far too soon to call … Read more »
Peter Margulies recently discussed the effect of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA denying standing to plaintiffs challenging the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program on the ongoing litigation in Hedges v. Obama. (Steve made a … Read more »
Who says that bipartisanship is dead and that our legislative process doesn’t work. For those who despair in all cases, take note today of the joint effort by Senators Leahy and Lee to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. … Read more »
This could be a very big deal… Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has issued a 24-page opinion striking down 18 U.S.C. §§ 2709(c) and 3511(b)–the provisions that prohibit the recipients … Read more »
There is a connection between Senator Paul’s filibuster and the need for a comprehensive renewal of presidential authorities for the administration’s stealth counterterrorism tactics (i.e., the cluster of tactics that include “covert action, Special Forces, drone surveillance and targeting, cyberattacks … Read more »
In its latest transparency report published this week, Google began sharing very general data about the number of National Security Letters (NSLs) it receives from the FBI or other government agencies seeking non-content transactional data in relation to national security … Read more »
Last June, a collection of advocacy and religious organizations, businesses, and individuals in New York City and New Jersey filed a federal lawsuit against the City of New York, alleging the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) “illegal targeting of … Read more »
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
As Wells reported, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA this morning. By a 5–4 vote, it held that a group of human rights organizations, lawyers, activists, and journalists lacked standing to challenge the … Read more »
The Supreme Court apparently concluded, in a 5-4 decision, that plaintiffs lack standing to challenge certain government surveillance programs.
Here’s some background on the case; we’ll post the opinion as soon as we get a copy.
UPDATE [11:25 a.m.]: … Read more »
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
There’s certainly a lot to say about the DOJ white paper on targeted killings, much of which has been said already (and well) by others (see Raff’s “Headlines and Commentary” post for links). At the risk of being unintentionally … 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 »
Amid all the fiscal cliff hubbub, the Senate on Friday approved, and President Obama on Sunday signed, the inelegantly if accurately named “FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012.” The new law extends its predecessor, the FISA Amendments Act … Read more »
The Wall Street Journal has an article today, titled “U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens.” It reports:
The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for
In the category of shameless self-promotion, I am quite pleased to announce the publication of National Security Law in the News: A Guide for Journalists, Scholars, and Policymakers. The book is a joint publication of the ABA Standing Committee on … Read more »
One important consequence of President Obama’s re-election will be the further entrenchment, and legitimation, of the basic counterterrorism policies that Obama continued, with tweaks, from the late Bush administration. We will have four more years of a Democratic president presiding … Read more »
I’ve been around this town long enough to know that Lawfare will not be the site that everyone is checking obsessively today. We’re not going to have exit polls here, and this may well be the only time you see … 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 »
The President had this to say about issues of interest to readers of the blog:
Obama: There are some things that we haven’t gotten done. I still want to close Guantanamo. We haven’t been able to get that through Congress.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Governing Body this week approved Recommended Guidelines for the Use of Unmanned Aircraft (downloadable here) by American law enforcement agencies. Among other things, they call for engagement with the community and … 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
I’ve been away on business travel this past week and am headed off on vacation next week so blogging for me has been light. But one recent post caught my eye and motivated me to add a quick note:
My … Read more »
Yesterday the NYPD unveiled its Domain Awareness System, which aggregates and analyzes existing public safety data streams (including license plate readers and video surveillance camera systems) in real time. Over at the Council on Foreign Relations, I wrote a short … Read more »
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 »
This Friday, I’ll be joining Benjamin Powell from WilmerHale (and formerly, inter alia, the General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) for a Federalist Society teleforum on Clapper v. Amnesty International–the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality … Read more »
The Wall Street Journal and Ars Technica report on some very intersting results of a FOIA request for information on the “national security letters” that the FBI sends to tech companies to get information on users. These letters have provoked … Read more »
Gabriella Blum has a new essay out entitled, “Invisible Threats.” Part of the Emerging Threats series of the Hoover Institution’s Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security and Law (of which Jack, Ken, Matt, and I am are all … Read more »
Craig Whitlock has a very interesting piece in the Washington Post today, the main thrust of which is to describe the military’s efforts to establish aerial surveillance capacity across wide swaths of Africa, in support of both counterterrorism and foreign … Read more »
FAA, eat your heart out. From The Hill, we learn that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has proposed legislation to curb the use of drones for domestic surveillance. The heart of his “Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act of 2012… Read more »
Ben Weiser of the New York Times wrote in today, and reminded me that the 9/11 case is obviously not first to confront the issue of secretly-recorded conversations between the defendant and other Guantanamo detainees.
The question came up in … Read more »
The Associated Press, via Fox News, has another intriguing excerpt from Dan Klaidman’s Kill or Capture: The War On Terror And The Soul Of The Obama Presidency. The book is shaping up to be a must-read for the Lawfare … Read more »
As I’ve argued previously here (at length) and here (briefly), if you are interested in government counterterrorism intelligence activities and privacy, don’t just pay attention at the federal level – there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on at … 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 »
Friday, May 24, 2013
Coverage of President Obama’s speech yesterday is plentiful: Here are Peter Baker of the New York Times, Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller of the Washington Post, and Mark Mazzetti of the Times with an analysis of the key points of the speech. Scott Wilson of the Post also provides a rundown of the speech, and cites Ben. The Associated Press reports on lifting the transfer ban on Yemeni detainees, and Colleen McCain Nelson, Adam Entous, and Julia E. Barnes… Read more »
