The Way of the Kris: David Kris Guest Blogging Starting Tomorrow

The dictionary defines a "kris" as "a Malayan and Indonesian stabbing or slashing knife with a scalloped edge." On this site, however, The Way of the Kris is not some new Mark Mazzetti book about Obama administration counterterrorism policy. It is a series of guest posts that will appear over the next few days by David Kris, former head of the National Security Division at the Justice Department. David, the co-author of this treatise on national security investigations and prosecutions, which we reviewed here, has tried to imagine what he terms a "blue sky" rewrite of U.S. surveillance law. Specifically, he has tried to lay out all of the axes along which U.S. surveillance law makes choices, and he poses the question of whether radical simplification of the law is possible in a fashion that might better protect both national security and civil liberties. David knows as much about the nitty gritty of national security surveillance law as anyone does---and he knows a great deal more than anyone else who talks about it publicly. His posts are a must-read for anyone interested in the subject.