Timothy H. Edgar defended privacy as an ACLU lawyer before going inside America’s growing surveillance state as an intelligence official in both the Bush and Obama administrations – a story he tells in Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance and the Struggle to Reform the NSA. In 2013, Edgar left government to become a Senior Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute and helped put together Brown’s Executive Master in Cybersecurity. Edgar also serves on the advisory board of Virtru, an encryption software company. Edgar’s work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and Wired. Edgar is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Dartmouth College.
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When reading laws about computers, judges should follow the technical approach cited by Justice Barrett in Van Buren. It is a sensible way out of the cybercrime maze.
One reason why Van Buren is good news for cybersecurity is that companies will actually need to improve the security of their systems, instead of hoping the threat of CFAA lawsuits or prosecutions will rescue them from their mistakes.
When the Supreme Court first encountered the internet, the justices expressed wonder at its potential. “It is ‘no exaggeration to conclude that the content on the Internet is as diverse as human thought,’” marveled Justice John Paul Stevens, then the court’s oldest member. The court decided that, unlike the more regulated television and broadcast media, this “‘unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication” was entitled to full First Amendment protection.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is wrapping up an important phase in his investigation. Even as he brings new charges in the case against President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, Mueller is coming to conclusions about Trump himself. According to the Washington Post, Mueller plans to document his findings in two reports: one on possible collusion with Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and one possible obstruction of justice in the course of the Russia investigation.
On Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller released the indictment of the "Internet Research Agency LLC," also known as the Russian troll factory, and a number of other entities and individuals.
I am honored that Lawfare is using my new book, "Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance and the Struggle to Reform the NSA" as the starting point for a conversation on the future of surveillance reform. Many thanks to those in the Lawfare community that offered me support, advice and comments along the way. I am looking forward to reading the essays of those who have agreed to write about the book in this mini-symposium, and I will respond to those essays with some closing thoughts of my own.
The world has waited for Donald Trump’s response to yesterday’s stunning testimony from former FBI Director James Comey. Trump’s uncharacteristic restraint in holding back from tweeting yesterday apparently didn’t last long. This morning he wrote:
Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication...and WOW, Comey is a leaker!