After President Richard Nixon was forced from office in 1974, congressional investigators discovered what they believed was the full extent of his use of the FBI and the CIA to engage in domestic spying. In that pre-digital era, the spying consisted of listening to...
Will the Apocalypse Arrive Online?
First the financial system collapses and it's impossible to access one’s money. Then the power and water systems stop functioning. Within days, society has begun to break down. In the cities, mothers and fathers roam the streets, foraging for food. The country finds...
Gazillions
Gazillions. That's the number of times the federal government has spied on Americans since 9/11 through the use of drones, legal search warrants, illegal search warrants, federal agent-written search warrants, and just plain government spying. This is according to...
Congress Must Act on Warrantless Wiretapping
As Congress and the president rush to re-authorize the dangerous FISA Amendments Act — the law shamefully passed after pressure to legalize certain portions of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program — EFF has been sounding the alarm that Americans’ communications...
Four More Years of Warrantless Surveillance
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) established a panel of judges (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) who were empowered to issue warrants to federal government organizations, including the National Security Agency, to enable them to...
Drones Overseas Lead to Drones at Home
The principal function of government since 9/11, even if unintentional, has been to develop strategies to reduce individual liberties and transfer power to the government while not appearing to do so. Of course, neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama actually...
America Adopts the Israel Paradigm
I recently read a fascinating article by Scott McConnell, “The Special Relationship With Israel: Is It Worth the Cost?,” which appeared in the spring 2012 Middle East Policy Council Journal. Even for those of us who have closely followed the issue of Israel’s...
The Specter of Domestic Drones
In recent months, the U.S. policy of drone attacks to kill suspected militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen has come under heated criticism. The extrajudicial targeted killings of suspects, including American citizens, is in itself a stark...
Unconstitutional Use of Drones Must Stop
Listen to Rep. Paul deliver this address. Last week I joined several of my colleagues in sending a letter to President Obama requesting clarification of his criteria for the lethal use of drones overseas. Administration officials assure us that a "high degree of...
Where Is the Outrage?
For the past few weeks, I have been writing in this column about the government's use of drones and challenging their constitutionality on Fox News Channel where I work. I once asked on air what Thomas Jefferson would have done if — had drones existed at the time —...