In his excellent analysis of the President's NSA speech and PPD-28, Ben suggests that there is less than meets the eye to the President's promise not to listen in on the conversations of foreign leaders ...

President Obama's speech on Friday and its accompanying Presidential Policy Directive (PDD-28) cover a lot of ground, announce a bunch of reforms, announce plans and direction for more, and kick still ot...

Yesterday’s New York Times editorial about the President’s speech faults the President for failing to give credit to Edward Snowden: One of his biggest lapses was his refusal to acknowledge that his enti...

I had two reactions to President Obama's address,  one general and another specific. First the general.  President Obama made a good speech today, both for what he said and what he didn't say.  He has a...

The President’s speech and accompanying Policy Directive together announce all manner of changes; it will take a while to grasp them all. In the meantime, here's an off-the-cuff reaction: I reckon we wil...

Huawei Denies US Compromised Security Equipment.  Here's the opening of this report from Australia: Chinese tech giant Huawei, which has long been dogged by security suspicions, has denied a report its t...

Hmmmm. Here's a very interesting few paragraphs from the Wall Street Journal: The president's speech, to be delivered at the Justice Department, caps a process that was similar to the one he undertook on...

Last fall, during the debate on airstrikes in Syria, commentators argued that the United States needed to act in order to preserve the credibility of American threats.

The Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law is putting out a series of short essays, starting today, called "The Briefing: Secrecy and Accountability in the Digital Age." Here is the...

David Sanger and Thom Shanker have a lengthy story in the NYT about various NSA techniques for penetrating foreign computers and networks, including a strategy for accessing seemingly air-gapped computer...

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge John Bates sent over two documents----a summary cover letter and a more detailed analysis---to the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Delivered in Bates's capacity as the Dire...

Since Edward Snowden unveiled the existence of NSA's mass surveillance programs in June, various government officials have gone on the record to claim that the programs have prevented terrorist attacks a...