The Week That Was: All of Lawfare in One Post

Unsurprisingly, the dominant story on Lawfare concerned a leaked FISA Court order and the disclosure of the NSA's PRISM program. Here are Steve's post, written when the Guardian first published its piece on the court order; and a pair of posts by Ben (first and second) wondering about the order's factual predicate.  Wells shared the Washington Post piece on PRISM. Bobby wrote about the PRISM and the FISA Court order revelations, and reflected on a 2008 post from David Kris about FISA minimization procedures.  Carrie Cordero also authored a guest post explaining why national security leaks of this nature are detrimental to the national defense. We are chock full of other resources and analysis for those trying to catch up on this story. Here are your government talking points produced in the immediate aftermath; Senate Intelligence Committee members' nonchalant response to the court order; the White House Deputy Principal Press Secretary's remarks; DNI Clapper's statement on the Verizon story; DNI Clapper's subsequent statement on the NSA PRISM program; reactions from Capitol Hill; Congressman James Sensenbrenner's letter to the Eric Holder; and President Obama's remarks on Friday morning. (Watch the video here). Don't miss Paul's pointing out of another top secret document published by the Guardian: the Administration's cyber operations policy. And although our policy is to not roundup our news roundups, Friday's might be of value to readers wishing to catch up on all that's happened. Geoffrey Corn of South Texas College of Law authored this guest post responding to Bobby's commentary on President Obama's speech at NDU. Jack piped in on proposed re-writes to the 2001 AUMF, wondering whether there might actually be a consensus among the first and second branches of government on the need to rewrite the law. Meanwhile, another contentious bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, was marked up in the House Armed Services Committee this week. Wells shared the Chairman's mark, and I shared the transcript of the debate over a defeated amendment that would have permitted GTMO detainees to be transferred to facilities in the United States. Jack questioned the White House's renewed commitment to close GTMO.  Reviewing detainee-related provisions in a draft Military Construction/Veterans Affairs appropriations bill, and the White House's official response to them, Jack saw only "business as usual," so far as concerns GTMO closure. Ben was in Bangkok, speaking at the International Military Law and Operations Conference. He wrote about this extraordinary gathering, and also about an exchange during the conference, between representatives of the Chinese and Philippine governments, regarding disputed islands in the South China Sea. We noted a recent statement by Christof Heyns, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.  He called for a moratorium on the use of lethal autonomous robots. The Council on Foreign Relations came out with a report, entitled Defending an Open, Global, Secure, and Resilient Internet. Matt shared it, and discussed the report's findings on international norms for cyberspace. Oral arguments in two GTMO-related cases took place early in the week out in the Ninth Circuit. We've got audio of the arguments in both Hamad v. Gates and Al-Nashiri v. MacDonald. Get the latest Podcast episode here, which featured remarks by Rached Ghannouchi.  He's a co-founder of Al Nahda, Tunisia's ruling Islamist party. Ritika caught up on Moments of Zen with this post featuring an Onion slideshow of must-follow terrorists on Twitter.   And that was the week that was. And what a week it was.