News & Commentary

The President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies just issued a report that unequivocally rejected the notion that privacy and civil liberties must be sacrificed in order to achieve a balance with national security. Liberty and Security in a Changing World includes 46 recommendations for how to reform Intelligence Community programs and practices, several of which would go a long way toward protecting Americans' rights. Here are the nine most important things you need to know about those recommendations.

The phone records program doesn't work, invades Americans' privacy, and threatens our freedoms.
The Review Group was unable to

This was originally posted on America's Voice.

"Whatever you do, if anything happens, don't take me to St. Vincent's." Those were the words my friend uttered to her husband regularly throughout her pregnancy years ago, when St. Vincent's, a Catholic hospital serving lower Manhattan, was still open. Even though St. Vincent's was the hospital closest to her home, she knew the risks of going to a Catholic hospital with a pregnancy complication. She knew that her care could be compromised – that Catholic hospitals adhere to religious directives issued by the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops governing Catholic health services.

Yesterday, the world marked International Migrants Day, providing an opportunity to reflect on global efforts to respect and protect migrants' human rights. It is particularly appropriate for us to call attention to U.S. government failure to protect the human and civil rights of communities and migrants along the U.S.'s border with Mexico.

Earlier this week in “The Flawed Logic of Secret Mass Surveillance” I presented some thinking about the dynamics of mass surveillance and what that suggests about how things are likely to play out in the future with regards to the NSA’s spying. It seems to me that there’s an essential structure to privacy that is reminiscent of game theory. And this could provide additional hints about how things are likely to play out over the long term—especially with regards to spying among nations. As I wrote in the earlier piece, spying confers power over others, and it is in my interest to secretly observe you, and for you not to secretly observe me.

I entered my first relationship during the beginning of my freshman year of college at Carnegie Mellon University. Everything was going just as I had hoped. I loved my classes and my new friends and I was dating another woman in my program. However, my relationship quickly became violent. My girlfriend became verbally and sexually abusive. During the six months that we dated, I was raped repeatedly and I began to live in fear.

The D.C. District Court decision this week in Klayman v. Obama, holding that the NSA's bulk telephone metadata program likely violates the Fourth Amendment, dealt a major blow to those seeking to codify the program into law. (The ACLU's challenge to the law is pending in New York, and a decision is expected any day.) Judge Richard Leon's ruling demolishes the already shaky legal foundation for the NSA's mass surveillance program, and makes it clear that reform means ending the unconstitutional suspicionless surveillance programs.

A diplomatic furor has erupted between New Delhi and Washington over the recent arrest of an Indian consular official by U.S. authorities for alleged visa fraud and underpayment of a housekeeper who she had brought from India.

A diplomatic furor has erupted between New Delhi and Washington over the recent arrest of an Indian consular official by U.S. authorities for alleged visa fraud and underpayment of a housekeeper who she had brought from India.