The Dread Pirate Roberts was as much lawmaker as lawbreaker
Ross Ulbricht, who called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts and created the Silk Road online drugs market, has just been sentenced to life in prison. In a letter…
Other Writing
A Sunset Is A Beautiful Thing
In the wake of a recent appellate court’s decision that the NSA’s domestic dragnet collection of phone call records is illegal, political support for maintainin…
Siri Is Judging You
In a fresh and recent whitepaper, Brookings Institution senior fellow Benjamin Wittes and law student Jodie Liu turn the standard privacy argument on its head:…
Ireland’s voters approve same-sex marriage. Here’s how that happened.
The official results make it clear that Ireland has voted yes to marriage equality. The final vote was 62.4% in favor of same sex marriage and 37.6% against. Th…
Sen. Paul’s Great Surveillance ‘Filibuster’ and What to Expect Next
By Patrick Eddington and Jennifer Granick Senator Rand Paul, joined by Senator Wyden and other surveillance reform advocates, as well as five members of the Ho…
CPJ joins call urging White House to protect encryption for journalists
Journalists are safest when their devices are secure by default. That is why the Committee to Protect Journalists today joined a coalition of nearly 150 civil s…
ACLU v. Clapper Will End the Telephone Dragnet
Cross-posted from Just Security. Last week’s dramatic Second Circuit decision in ACLU v. Clapper, invalidated the alleged legal basis for the NSA domestic phon…
The Intelligence Time Machine
On Tuesday, members in the House and Senate introduced new versions of the USA Freedom Act that would prohibit bulk collection of records under Section 215 of t…
Surveillance forces journalists to think and act like spies
Once upon a time, a journalist never gave up a confidential source. When someone comes forward, anonymously, to inform the public, it's better to risk time…
Not ‘digital exhaust;’ rather ‘digital fossils’
Recently a member of Congress got into some pretty serious hot water over allegations he accepted numerous unethical, and perhaps illegal, favors including flig…
Two continents, two courts, two approaches to privacy
At 3:20 a.m. on August 24, 2014, the strongest earthquake in a quarter-centuryrocked the San Francisco Bay Area, causing damage widely estimated at between $300…
The right to life and the Martens Clause
Patrick Lin made interesting observations on the ethical notion of human dignity in the context of LAWS. Even if LAWS could act in accordance with IHL, taking o…