Brennan Center for Justice – New Report: “Secret Law” Governs Key Aspects of National Security Policy – “At least 74 opinions, memoranda, and letters issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) between 2002 and 2009 on core post-9/11 national security topics, including intelligence activities and the detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects,… Continue Reading
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CA Digital Library – New Platform for Declassified Documents Reference System
California Digital Library: “The U.S. Declassified Documents can now be cross-searched with the other archive resources on the Artemis platform. You can filter search results by document type, classification level, publication year and by other categories. Results can be analysed using the built-in Term Frequency and Term Clusters tools. U.S. Declassified Documents Online provides access… Continue Reading
EFF Sues for Secret Court Orders Requiring Tech Companies to Decrypt Users’ Communications
Via EFF: “The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit today against the Justice Department to shed light on whether the government has ever used secret court orders to force technology companies to decrypt their customers’ private communications, a practice that could undermine the safety and security of devices used by… Continue Reading
EFF Provides Evidence to Courts on Telecoms Collection of Metadata
“This week EFF presented evidence in two of its NSA cases confirming the participation of Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T in the NSA’s mass telephone records collection under the Patriot Act. This is important because, despite broad public acknowledgement, the government is still claiming that it can dismiss our cases because it has never confirmed… Continue Reading
Injunction against metadata collection reversed by U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit
EFF – “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s opinion [August 28, 2015] in Klayman v. Obama is highly disappointing and, worse, based on a mistaken concern about the underlying facts. The court said that since the plaintiffs’ phone service was provided by one subsidiary of Verizon—Verizon Wireless—rather than another—Verizon Business—they couldn’t prove that they… Continue Reading
Secret court authorizes continued telephone metadata collection
The Guardian UK: “After a decade in the shadows, a secretive surveillance court that authorises the bulk collection of American telephone records seized on its last chance to show off a little personality on Tuesday [June 30, 2015]. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, well, at least for 180 days,” wrote judge Michael… Continue Reading
US DOJ IG Report – Review of the FBI’s Use of Section 215 Orders
FBI’s Use of Section 215 Orders: Assessment of Progress in Implementing Recommendations and Examination of Use in 2007 through 2009, Oversight and Review Division Report 15-05. May 2015. Redacted. “The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced today the release of a public version of its most recent report examining the… Continue Reading
What Went Wrong with the FISA Court
Brennan Center for Justice – What Went Wrong with the FISA Court by Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein, Faiza Patel, March 18, 2015. “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court is no longer serving its constitutional function of providing a check on the executive branch’s ability to obtain Americans’ private communications. Dramatic shifts in technology and law have… Continue Reading
EFF – In a First, Government Acknowledges the Limits of Section 215
“Following EFF’s victory in a four-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the government released an opinion, written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 2010, that concluded that Section 215—the provision of the Patriot Act the NSA relies on to collect millions of Americans’ phone records—does have a limit: census date The Commerce Department… Continue Reading
Yemen: Background and U.S. Relations
CRS Report – Yemen: Background and U.S. Relations. Jeremy M. Sharp, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs. January 21, 2015. “This report provides an overview and analysis of U.S.-Yemeni relations amidst evolving political change in Yemeni leadership, ongoing U.S. counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) operatives in Yemen’s hinterlands, and international efforts… Continue Reading
Prying Eyes: Inside the NSA’s War on Internet Security
By SPIEGEL Staff: “…Software giant Microsoft, which acquired Skype in 2011, said in a statement: “We will not provide governments with direct or unfettered access to customer data or encryption keys.” The NSA had been monitoring Skype even before that, but since February 2011, the service has been under order from the secret US Foreign… Continue Reading
Safeguarding the Personal Information of all People – ODNI
Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) – Safeguarding the Personal Information of all People, July 2014. “As the President said in his speech on January 17, 2014, “the challenges posed by threats like terrorism, proliferation, and cyber-attacks are not going away any time soon, and for our intelligence community to be effective over the… Continue Reading
