On Saturday, February 27th, President Obama signed a one-year extension of the three expiring sections of the USA PATRIOT Act. These sections are Section 215 (the so-called “library records” provision), Section 206 (involving “roving wiretaps”), and Section 207 (the so-called “lone-wolf” provision). Last week, both the House and Senate voted to extend the sections without change, despite the fact that […]

By Jonathan Abrams, NSJ Staff Editor - Five American Muslims who were detained in Pakistan on suspicion of terrorism have alleged torture by American and Pakistani authorities. The men, all from the Washington, DC area, were detained in December shortly after arriving in Pakistan. The Pakistani government has accused them of plotting terrorist attacks in Pakistan and seeking to join […]

In September and October of 2001, an anonymous source dropped a white powder containing deadly anthrax into the mail. The attack killed five people; threatened the safety of Congress, the media, and the public at large; and rekindled the fears still raw from the September 11th attacks. The FBI ultimately focused on Bruce Ivins as a suspect, a biologist at […]

By John Cella — The intrusion by unidentified Chinese hackers into Google’s networks in January is likely not an isolated incident, but part of the growing trend of state-sponsored acts of cyberwarfare. While Google is a private corporation, attacks against it and other American corporations have significant national security implications. Beyond the private harms inflicted by corporate espionage, such cyber-attacks […]

By John Thorlin, NSJ Staff Editor - Assassinating foreign leaders outside of an ongoing armed conflict is of questionable legality, even if doing so would prevent a broader war. Humanitarian interventions such as the NATO bombings in Kosovo-acts deliberately aimed at saving lives-are prohibited by the laws of war, which do not differentiate between the motivations for acts of armed […]

As part of the continuing war in Afghanistan, the United States has made extensive use of unmanned Predator drones to carry out reconnaissance as well as armed strikes. On Monday The New York Times reported that a U.S. drone killed three militants in North Waziristan, and on Friday CNN reported that a Haqqani network commander was killed in a drone […]

By Jonathan Abrams, NSJ Staff Editor - On March 23rd, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments concerning the power of a federal judge to compel the Executive to admit detainees into the United States. But a two sentence order issued by the Court on Friday signaled that new developments may result in the Court never reaching the merits. […]

Representative Candace Miller (R-MI) has introduced H.R. 4415, the Terrorist Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010. The bill expands the definition of unlawful enemy combatant, codified at 10 U.S.C. § 948 to include persons determined by the President to be closely associated with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, to have taken up arms on behalf of Al Qaeda, or […]

The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill points to the recent deaths of three United States special forces soldiers in Pakistan as further evidence of the existence of an extensive, but classified American military presence in that country. Scahill highlights a number of reasons to be suspicious of the United States Government’s claims that the soldiers were part of a training mission. He […]

By Jeffrey Kahn - When your favorite tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. After the near-catastrophe on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, it is not surprising that many hammer away with the tools they know best: data-mining and watchlists. The conventional wisdom is that if we know enough soon enough, we can stop the next […]