FISC Presiding Judge Reggie B. Walton yesterday rejected the government's request to retain telephony metadata beyond five years. On January 3, 2014, the FISC approved the government's request to collec...

The news is here.  European officials confirm that at least two of the passengers whose passports were used to board MH370 were not, in fact, on the plane and that those who boarded the plane were using ...

As Jack has frequently observed, legitimacy and effectiveness often go hand-in-hand.  The two comprehensive State Department memoranda by former Legal Adviser (and Yale Law School dean) Harold Koh releas...

Well worth a read: Charlie Savage's story, for the New York Times, regarding Obama Administration debate over whether the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention Against ...

"Drones: 1, FAA: 0" is the headline of Ryan Calo's article in Forbes.com about the overturning of an FAA fine against a domestic drone operator. Those who remember the FAA's faintly absurd intervention i...

Apparently Edward Snowden has given this testimony, remotely of course, before the European Parliament. It opens as follows: I would like to thank the European Parliament for the invitation to provide te...

Susan Landau has a  follow-up to her earlier piece on the significance of Snowden’s revelations.   This piece focuses on “collection of stored meta-data, surveillance of communications content, and secur...

If you've never been to Austin during South by Southwest, you are truly missing out.  SXSW season begins today with the SXSW Interactive and Film Festivals, and I'm happy to report that the Strauss Cente...

That is the claim put forward, with gusto, by Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute in this Guardian article. Eyal correctly notes the importance of the principle of distinction, and more...

The DNI yesterday released it's latest Guantanamo reengagement report, which show a 29 percent rate of confirmed or suspected reengagement. That's essentially unchanged from the last such report in Septe...

This question occurred to me last week, after I served as an alternate juror in a criminal trial here in D.C. Two men were charged with, and---after two days’ worth of evidence---found guilty of robbing ...

Stefan Soesanto writes in with the following thoughts on my earlier post on Russia's introduction of troops into Ukraine as an international law violation: Amidst the ongoing political crisis in the Ukra...

Russia's recent military actions in Crimea have many wondering what (and where) Crimea is, anyway. Here are the basics on geography and history. Crimea is a Ukranian peninsula in the northern Black Sea ...