Posts

I've long been tracking the case of Minh Quang Pham, whom I call the "graphic artist of mass destruction" because he is accused of helping Samir Khan on Inspire. He was detained in the UK back in July 2011 (see the timeline). That December,…

The Senate just voted down cloture on the USA Freedom Act, 58-42. Even while we disagreed on the bill, I extend sincere condolences to civil liberties allies who worked hard to pass this in good faith. I know you all have worked hard in good…

I Con the Record has released the transcript for the Yahoo hearing before the FISA Court of Review. I'll come back to the substance of it, but I did want to point to the lie that underscores this entire case.   On page 41,…

Remember when the George W. Bush campaign and the Republican Party was attacking John Kerry during the 2004 campaign over comments where they construed as him saying that terrorism is a police matter? Here's a refresher: Bush campaign Chairman…

Update: I realize something about this classification guide. While it was updated in 2012 (so after the Internet dragnet got shut down) it was dated August 2009, so while it was still running. So that part of this may not be location data. But…

Political and military leaders in the US are hopelessly addicted to the idea of training an Iraqi military. Never mind that it fails every time a "new" initiative on training is introduced. As soon as the situation in Iraq deteriorates, the…

The government assures us that it does not maintain a database of incidentally collected information from non-targeted United States persons, and there is no evidence to the contrary. On these facts, incidentally collected communications of…

Back in September, I called the final agreement between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah a graft-sharing agreement when it paved the way for Ghani to take office as President while Abdullah would assume the extra-constitutional and John Kerry-created…

Back in 1993, cartoonist Peter Steiner famously captured a largely held belief about the Internet: "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." According to a fascinating new study from Pew, that's no longer true. Just 24% of adults “agree”…