FISA
What the Inspector General’s Latest FISA Report Can (and Can’t) Tell Us
Adam Klein Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 8:01 AM
In light of the Inspector General’s latest report, how worried should we be about the state of the FISA process?
Adam Klein is Director of the Program on Technology, Security, and Global Affairs at the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Until June 2021, he served as Chairman of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal agency that oversees counterterrorism and intelligence programs.
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FISA
What I Found in 19 FISA Applications
Adam Klein Fri, Jun 18, 2021, 10:47 AM
A set of 19 complete FISA applications offered a chance to form impressions about what these applications contain, and how the information is presented, across different FBI agents and government attorneys and over a span of five years.
Coronavirus
The Long History of Coercive Health Responses in American Law
Adam Klein, Benjamin Wittes Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 2:56 PM
Americans are rediscovering the power of federal and state governments to enforce quarantine and isolation in the midst of the pandemic.
Counterterrorism
The Cyclical Politics of Counterterrorism
Adam Klein Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 1:48 PM
Why didn’t the United States invade Afghanistan and destroy Al Qaeda before September 11, 2001?
Surveillance
Today’s Big News About “Backdoor Searches”
Adam Klein Tue, May 2, 2017, 4:14 PM
One of the most hotly debated aspects of Section 702 is the practice of querying 702-acquired data using U.S.-person identifiers—in particular, queries conducted by the FBI in non-national-security criminal investigations. Some label these “backdoor searches,” although the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has held that such queries are not searches that trigger the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.
Surveillance
The End of “About” Collection under Section 702
Adam Klein Mon, May 1, 2017, 10:07 AM
As Bobby and others have already noted, the NSA announced Friday that it is ending “about” collection under Section 702’s upstream component.
Surveillance
Don’t Dismiss Concerns about Transition-Period Unmasking (At Least Not Yet)
Adam Klein Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:37 PM
The aftermath of the 2016 election has spun off yet another divisive issue: Whether White House officials inappropriately requested the identities of Trump transition aides whose names had been “masked” in classified intelligence reports. The kerfuffle over unmasking adds even more to the already heaping plates of congressional investigators currently probing Russian “active measures” and leaks of U.S.-person information collected under FISA.