The Week That Was

The Week That Was: All of Lawfare In One Post

Saturday, August 31, 2013, 11:00 AM

There is little sense in rounding up all of Lawfare-ers' Syria-related posts, as our fearless Managing Editor already did so. But for convenience sake, here is a recap of the links anyway:

Matt shared a related draft Yale Law Journal article entitled "The Constitutional Power to Threaten War."

We've finished summarizing all of the NSA materials declassified last week. Here's the whole series:

Introduction, by Ben
Summary of the October 2011 FISC Opinion, written up by Ben and Lauren
Summary of the November 2011 FISC Opinion, by Ben and Jane
Summary of the September 2012 FISC Opinion, by Ben and Sean
Summary of Statements to Congress, by Ben, Ritika and me
Summary of the Minimization Procedures, by Ben and Sean
Summary of the Compliance Report, by Jane

Ben declared war against the law review, announcing that Lawfare would henceforth be publishing policy-relevant scholarship. As a first installment on that promise, he released this paper on the NSA programs by former OLC chief Steven G. Bradbury.

Some Guantanamo-related news: The DoD announced that two detainees were transferred to Algeria, and a Yemeni detainee's petition for rehearing his habeas case en banc was denied by the D.C. Circuit.

A special edition Lawfare podcast episode came out mid-week: The Cairo Edition, featuring Laura Dean.

Perhaps to some people the most significant cyberattack this week was that on the New York Times, but not to Paul; he thinks it was the denial of service attack on the .cn network (the Chinese internet, that is). Paul also noted the draft cybersecurity framework promulgated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology; the framework is a component of the President's cybersecurity executive order.

Ben shared a video to note a little-discussed reason the FAA is concerned about drones in domestic airspace: ground safety.

Our uneventful summer wouldn't be complete without one more leak from Edward Snowden---this time, the Intelligence Community FY13 budget request, which Paul conceded must be a painful leak, despite the Washington Post's decision not to release the line-by-line details. Joel Brenner wrote a guest post on the leaks, wondering how on earth Snowden had access to these particular documents, given his role at Booz Allen.

Praise the Internet gods: Lawfare finally completed its hosting switch. We thank you, loyal readers, for bearing with us the last few weeks.

Here's a peak at our web statistics during this "slow" month of August: around 30 visits from Iran, about 10 from Cuba, over 140 from Russia, and one from Syria.

And that was the week that was.

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The Week That Was

Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT. Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.

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