Tomorrow will be one of the first and possibly last opportunities for a real discussion of the US Drone Assassination program as John Brennan goes before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in hopes of being confirmed as CIA director. Already a contentious issue, the stakes have been further raised as a Justice Department white [...]

Depending on who you believe, the Senate either voted today to limit indefinite detention practices or voted to allow those limits to be determined by the executive branch. You may need a degree in linguistics to figure this one out. First, here’s the basics of what happened: The Senate voted late on Thursday to prohibit [...]

The United Nations special rapporteur for counterterrorism will lead an inquiry into civilian deaths from US drone strikes around the world, to determine whether the strikes violate international human rights and humanitarian laws. The announcement was made by Ben Emmerson QC, a UN special rapporteur, in a speech to Harvard law school in which he [...]

Greg Miller will shine a light on the new American way of war for the next three days, with a multi-part series in the Washington Post on the kill list, the way in which terrorist suspects are selected for death from above by Predator drones. The goal here appears to be to codify the techniques into executive branch practice, for turnkey use by any current or future Administration.

Nothing else needs to be said about the sociopathy of Joe Klein than what Glenn Greenwald describes today. Klein’s justification for drone warfare comes down to “we have to kill their children before they kill our children,” and frankly that’s about as nuancedas our foreign policy debate gets these days. Greenwald goes into all the [...]

In a significant ruling today, a federal appeals court overturned a conviction of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, obtained through a military commission. Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a George W. Bush appointee seen as a possible conservative Supreme Court justice, wrote in a ruling for a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court that Hamdan [...]

A disturbing new Senate report highlights anti-terrorism “fusion centers,” which were designed to allow state, local and federal investigators to share information about terrorism. Instead, says the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the centers have produced useless intelligence information and proven a waste of money. “The subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a [...]

The Senate easily advanced a motion to proceed on their version of a cybersecurity bill yesterday, by an 84-11 vote. Clearly this bill, a separate version of which has already passed the House, has a broad degree of support. As if on cue yesterday, the head of the National Security Agency Keith Alexander, warned about [...]

To protect Bank of America from inconvenience, Charlotte, North Carolina has directed its police officers to harass and arrest protesters. Unconstitutionally, in my opinion. Charlotte Sides With Bank of America Over People Charlotte has imposed special rules on a 2 block by 2 block square for 12 hours on Wednesday (May 9) to protect the [...]

I mentioned earlier that the White House weighed in on CISPA, the cybersecurity bill working its way through Congress. Previously they had been generally supportive of it, at least from the words of counter-terrorism czar John Brennan. But now, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council has criticized the bill. CISPA would encourage companies to [...]

Over the past couple weeks, another grassroots protest has emerged against legislation that would affect the Internet. It’s at a lower level than the SOPA/PIPA protests so far, but the activism against CISPA, which is considered cybersecurity legislation, is following the same trajectory. Many experts have described the threats from CISPA, particularly to the privacy [...]