It is clear that the Second Circuit’s ruling that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records violates Section 215 of the Patriot Act will have significant implications for the current legi...

The most interesting issue in the opinion concerns ratification of the FISC's interpretation of Section 215 by Congressional reauthorization of the Patriot Act.  I think the decision boils down to a judg...

As Ben notes below, the Second Circuit has handed down its ruling in the legal challenge to the bulk telephony metadata program. I have posted a summary of the Second Circuit's ruling, together with my ...

Here's the opinion. I haven't read it yet, but will have comments when I do.

Ben flagged today that the Germans have been caught out spying on friends and allies. What makes this a story is the way the Germans responded more than a year ago when Snowden’s leaks revealed that the ...

In case you needed a refresher course on European hypocrisy on surveillance and data privacy, the New York Times today obliges with two stories over which the connoisseur of human folly ought really to p...

I've long been a huge fan of (Retired) Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, not least because his prized possessions include a scorecard from Game 3 of the 1932 World Series--better known to baseball...

A new AP-GFK poll released today finds broad swaths of the American public continue to strongly support the U.S. targeted killing program. The poll was conducted in the days immediately following Preside...

An intelligence community reader writes in with the following response to my post this morning on Dean Baquet's interview with Jack: The issue is not [only] whether the true name and affiliation [of the ...

The estimable Mark Mazzetti---the New York Times national security reporter who wrote the story over the weekend that prompted the outing-CIA-officers flap---writes in with the following note in response...

This morning, Jack published an interview he conducted yesterday with New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet about the paper's decision the other day to publish the names of three covert CIA officers.

On April 25, two days after President Obama announced that a U.S. drone strike accidentally killed two innocent hostages, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo published a story in the New York Times about congr...