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Defining Stingray Emergencies … or Not
A couple of weeks ago, ACLU NoCal released more documents on the use of Stingray. While much of the attention focused on the admission that innocent people get sucked up in Stingray usage, I was at...
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Obama Administration Changed the Rationale for Why Assassinations Don’t...
As a number of outlets have reported, the Second Circuit last month upheld the government’s effort to keep a March 29, 2002 OLC memo pertaining to targeted killing secret; the opinion was unsealed...
View ArticleOne Reason CIA Is Claiming Drone Emails Are Top Secret: ACLU’s FOIA
The NYT has a really helpful description of the emails to Hillary that intelligence agencies are claiming are Top Secret. It explained how several of the emails almost certainly couldn’t derive from...
View ArticleIn 2010, DOJ Was Stalling Gang of Four Member Silvestre Reyes Over (Probably)...
As far as the public record shows, Ron Wyden first started complaining about the Common Commercial Service OLC Memo in late 2010, in a letter with Russ Feingold written “over two years” before January...
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“In the First Half of 2016” Signal Received an (Overbroad) Subpoena
This morning, the ACLU released a set of information associated with a subpoena served on Open Whisper Systems, the maker of Signal)\, for information associated with two phone numbers. As ACLU...
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Some Thoughts On The Arpaio Pardon
As you probably already know, Trump has pardoned Joe Arpaio. It is an abominable act by a lawless jackass. One lawless jackass pardoning another lawless jackass. Trump and Arpaio are really two peas in...
View ArticleLeahy-Lee versus USA Lip Service: An Improvement, But Still a...
Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee have introduced their version of Section 702 reauthorization, which like HJC they also call USA Liberty and like that bill doesn’t improve liberty. For convenience and...
View ArticleRosemary Collyer Moves to Lock Down the FISA Court
These two filings at the FISA Court — letters from Rosemary Collyer to Republican members of Congress trying to liberate documents related to Carter Page’s FISA application — have generated a good deal...
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Long Overdue Policies that Look Obvious in the Age of Pandemic
I’m not usually a fan of George Packer. But I keep coming back to this column, We Are Living in a Failed State. The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken, which is...
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Three Things: Numbers, Hearings and Racist Code
There’s always more than three things to address but here’s three we should look at more closely. ~ 3 ~This is what we’re up against. 823 Americans have died of COVID-19 since yesterday. In contrast,...
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Why DOJ Withheld the Correlations Opinion: The DC Circuit’s Mosaic
On January 9, 2014, the government appealed Judge Richard Leon’s decision finding the phone dragnet in Klayman v. Obama to the DC Circuit. The DC Circuit, of course, is the court that issued US. v...
View ArticleFixes for USA Freedom Act
I’m now being accused by USA Freedom Act champions of not providing constructive suggestions on how to improve USAF (even though I have, both via channels they were involved in and channels they are...
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The FBI PRTT Documents: Combined Orders
As I noted the other day, I’m working through documents submitted in EPIC’s FOIA for PRTT documents (see all of EPIC’s documents on this case here). In addition to the documents released (the reports...
View ArticleGovernment’s Assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki Used “Significantly Different”...
Jameel Jaffer has a post on the government’s latest crazy-talk in the ongoing ACLU and NYT effort to liberate more drone memos. He describes how — in the government’s response to their appeal of the...
View ArticleACLU’s Poker Face
Thus far, I have not seen a statement from the ACLU on last night’s developments with respect to the PATRIOT Act — the passage of cloture, McConnell’s failure to even ask for an immediate vote,...
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Illiberal Hollywood: What’s the Point of a Union if It Doesn’t Represent...
This year continues to be a big one for women in film. Films featuring women as leads and/or directed by women made beaucoup at the box office. Mad Max: Fury Road, Pitch Perfect 2, Insurgent, and Fifty...
View ArticleI Con the Record: Drop the Lawsuits and We’ll Release the Data Hostages
I Con the Record just announced that the NSA will make the phone dragnet data it has “analytically unavailable” after the new system goes live in November, and unavailable even to techs three months...
View ArticleThe Loopholes in DOJ’s New Stingray Policy
DOJ just announced a new policy on use of Stingrays which requires a warrant and minimization of incidentally-collected data. It’s big news and an important improvement off the status quo. But there...
View ArticleThe Awkward Timing of the 2nd Circuit Denial of ACLU’s Request for a Phone...
The 2nd circuit just denied the ACLU’s request for an injunction in the phone dragnet, finding that Congress intended to let the dragnet continue for 6 months after passage of USA F-ReDux. That’s not...
View ArticleThe Second Circuit Attempts to Reassert Its Non-Definition of Relevant
Orin Kerr and Steve Vladeck got in a bit of a squabble last week over the Second Circuit’s decision not to reach the constitutionality of the phone dragnet. Vladeck called it wrong-headed, because even...
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