The Week That Was: All of Lawfare In One Post

The big news heading into this week was that the U.S. conducted two nearly-simultaneous raids in Africa. Wells shared the breaking news on Saturday, and Lawfare writers certainly had thoughts about their implications: Bobby offered preliminary thoughts in the immediate aftermath, and then concluded that the application of the AUMF in the unsuccessful raid to capture a member of Al Shabaab isn't a shift in the authorization's scope; Jack was prompted to end the End-of-War Timeline, his point being "that the decade of war is not coming to an end, just changing;" John discussed the Geneva Conventions' application to the detention of al-Libi, and Peter Margulies responded to John in a guest post; Ben laid out three reasons why a particular trio of senators' recycled proposals to send al-Libi to Guantanamo are incorrect; and Wells noted a failed attempt by the Federal Defenders of New York to be appointed as al-Libi's counsel. But Delta Force and the Navy SEALs didn't distract us from the government shutdown. Ben kicked things off on Sunday with a post entitled "National Security, the Shutdown, and Moral Seriousness." His first follow up post, in which he quotes a "veteran administration official," requests more details from those feeling the national security effects of the shutdown directly. He also received, and responded to, a reaction from GMU's Jeremy Rabkin about those concerns. Ritika noted SecDef Chuck Hagel's remarks in calling back 400,000 civilian DoD employees, and Ben shared the letter Senate Republicans sent to President Obama requesting that he designate all national security workers to be essential. We had another week's worth of posts over at the Lawfare-New Republic Security States feed:

• Paul: What Big Data Does, and Doesn't, Know About Me
• Wells: What Happens When an Al Qaeda Suspect is Detained at Sea?
• Me (Raffaela): "Take the Drugs, But Don't Take the People's Bitcoins"
• Faiza Patel: Does the U.N.'s Syria Resolution Violate the Chemical Weapons Convention?
• Jack: Obama's Crackdown on Leaks Won't Stop Secrets From Coming Out
• Jane: Why Is Our Cybersecurity So Insecure?

On the effect of the shutdown, the DoJ's filings across the federal courts for pauses, continuances, postponements, and other delays have not all been granted: two D.C. Circuit cases with imminent oral arguments did not get the pause that DoJ requested: Jane explains what happened in Aamer v. Obama, the forced-feeding case whose oral argument is set for next week, and I covered Al Janko v. Gates. In a GTMO district court case, I noted a preemptive strike of sorts by the petitioner-detainee Ahmed Adnan Ajam to schedule oral argument despite the shutdown. And in the shutdown, the DoD managed to fill a very important position: the Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure. The man who will take on that role come November 1 is Friend of Lawfare Paul Lewis, who was Minority General Counsel to the House Armed Services Committee. Apropos (or not) of that news, the Department of Defense also announced that it plans to resume the Periodic Review Boards for Guantanamo detainees. On NSA matters, Ben highlighteda B.S. ("Before Snowden") op-ed authored by the chief compliance officer of NSA, John DeLong, discussing, well, the challenges of his job. The EIC also shared Shane Harris's latest work over at Foreign Policy and used it as a means of comparing Bush's defense of the CIA during his tenure to Obama's relative silence on NSA. Paul highlighted the latest Snowden leak: that NSA has infiltrated Tor, an anonymous, encrypted web browser. And Jack linked to his TNR piece (not on Security States),  which predicts that the Snowden effect might help, not hurt, cybersecurity. Germany's foreign intelligence service acknowledged that it is capable of monitoring email traffic---Paul highlighted a Wall Street Journal story on that. Since we all know that CIA is training Syrian rebels, does the spy agency's action really count as "covert action"? Jack wondered about the answer to that question. Laura Dean's Cairo Diary had an additional entry on Saturday. Perhaps a story line we haven't heard too much about recently, but one that is may be on people's minds: the prosecution of the alleged Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Zach explains the defendant's motion to vacate special administrative measures imposed on him and his legal team. Lauren summarized an important district court opinion that expanded, somewhat, national security materials that could be disclosed pursuant to to a FOIA request. I summarized the Ninth Circuit's recent decision in Hamad v. Gates, a former Guantanamo detainee's challenge to his detention and treatment under the Detainee Treatment Act. The three-judge panel found no subject-matter jurisdiction to hear his case. Ken wrote a lengthy post about Europe's lag in drone technology development. Bobby explored Hillary Mantel's insightful, security-related thoughts in her novel, A Place of Greater Safety. Ritika posted a delightful Washington Post story sharing the details of an advice-giving and answer-providing letter from Special Operations Commander Admiral William McRaven to a six-year-old boy. Undergraduates and recent college grads, we want YOU to apply to be the next Lawfare intern. Activities include creating things like this. And that was the week that was.