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A humanitarian ceasefire is set to begin in Yemen today. Fighting will stop at 11 pm local time so that shipments of food and medicine can be safely transported into the country. Reuters describes the hu...
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I was honored to be invited to give a keynote speech at an Intelligence Community legal conference last Wednesday, May 6. The speech was entitled Toward Greater Transparency of National Security Legal W...
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When a journalist writes a tell-all story about a classified operation, and he suspects the story will catalyze anti-American anger, provide fuel for terrorist groups, and cause severe friction with fore...
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Twenty senior former CIA officials—including every CIA Director (including DCIs) dating back to William Webster (1987-91)—wrote a letter to the NYT to take issue with NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet’s d...
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On Sunday, Houthi rebels in Yemen accepted a five-day ceasefire offered last week by Saudi Arabia. The New York Times reports that the temporary truce would begin Tuesday night and allow for the delivery...
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On May 7th, 2015, the Second Circuit issued a ruling that declared the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records was clearly unlawful under the Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. The ruling provided...
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On Saturday, in writing about the Second Circuit's 215 decision, I mentioned the DC Circuit's pending Klayman case and its capacity to throw a wrench into the current debate: "Yes, it is possible---likel...
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Event Announcements (More details on the Events Calendar)
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Lawfare is pleased to announce the publication of a new -- and timely -- paper in the Lawfare Research Paper Series: An Essay on Domestic Surveillance, by Philip B. Heymann, law professor at Harvard Law ...
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Thursday's 2nd Circuit decision striking down 215 ends with a brief, and unresolved, rumination on the impact explicit congressional authorization might have on a 4th Amendment analysis---if and when suc...
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Editor’s Note: Part of the job of intelligence officials is to give bad news to policymakers. But should officials at times soften their assessments or otherwise pick their battles in order to maintain t...
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The Triple Entente Beer Summit was a great success, with an audience that filled the Washington Firehouse loft and a cast that mashed up the Lawfare Podcast, Rational Security, and the Steptoe Cyberlaw P...
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From day one of the Snowden revelations, we all knew that the legal validity of the 215 program hinged ultimately on the capaciousness of a single word: "relevant." Even those of us who generally support...
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Shane Harris breaks the fabulous news over at the Daily Beast:
Matthew Waxman, a law professor and former senior national security official in the George W.
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On Thursday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the NSA’s bulk telephone metadata collection program by ruling that the program wasn’t authorized by the language of Section 215 of the Patrio...
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A reader familiar with surveillance matters writes in with these two questions about yesterday's opinion from the Second Circuit:
1) The opinion seems to turn on the Court's belief that either not enoug...
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Yesterday, FBI Director James Comey said that federal law enforcement officials determined hours before the cartoon contest in Garland, Texas that one of the gunmen had expressed interest in going to the...
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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...
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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...
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Join Lawfare tonight from 6:00-9:00 pm at the Washington Firehouse for the first Triple Entente Beer Summit.
Grab your ticket online, or pick up one at the door.