The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was to have had a hearing today on proposed reforms to the NSA surveillance programs.  I was invited as a witness on a panel with Steve Bradbury and S...

As part of our work on a chapter for an upcoming book on Madisonian thought and contemporary public policy, Ben and I wrote this piece for Security States about James Madison's vacillations on executive ...

Having gained no purchase in federal district courts in countering NSA's telephony metadata program, privacy activists are attempting a different strategy: taking the fight directly to the United States ...

How long will the enhanced security state in America last?  Apparently, some think it will be "for the rest of time."  That has to be wrong. As readers of this blog know, I live on Capitol Hill and walk...

As Yahoo News reports,the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has published an order granting Yahoo and the government's joint motion to allow Yahoo pre-publication access to FISC documents after dec...

Over at the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf takes a peek at my ideology in response to my critique of the Washington Post's recent story on NSA collection of email contact lists overseas. I'm glad he did.

As Ben noted, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has redacted and made available another memorandum and primary order dealing with Section 215 telephone metadata collection. Two things s...

Get yer copies of the memorandum and primary order here. (Other less interesting documents here and here.) I'll write up my thoughts as soon as I have any.

Although Joel's post from last night cites the wrong letter from Judge Walton to Senators Leahy and Grassley, this week's letter, which definitely does not bury the lede, does provide significant data on...

Now we know:  the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court bounces a quarter of the government’s applications for surveillance orders.  This according to statistics released this week by the court’s chief...

Here's the Fourth Circuit's order denying two petitions for rehearing en banc----one by New York Times reporter James Risen, the other by former CIA Officer Jeffrey Sterling.