I wonder how many hard-line Republicans are going to Google “Operation Chaos” looking for information about Rush Limbaugh’s plan to bolster Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and instead discover that—back in the golden age before we passed that awful, restrictive, un-American FISA law—”Operation Chaos” was the CIA’s clever name for the practice of systematically spying on the [...]

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At the risk of inducing commenters to start demanding “Freebird,” here’s a quick take on Andy McCarthy’s recent NRO column on FISA and border searches. You have to wade through a few paragraphs of talk-radio style throat clearing, in which McCarthy uses his psychic powers to divine that congressional Democrats have blocked expanded executive [...]

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Adam Thierer links a sound post on the way concerns about privacy in the digital context seem inconsistent with our reactions in the physical realm:
Let’s say you are a tall, dashing, smartly dressed Chief Research Officer at a major Internet audience measurement company, and you walk into Nordstrom’s. A sales clerk you recognize comes up [...]

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Last month, I wrote a short piece for the American Spectator in which I argued that the position Republicans have taken on executive-branch spying powers in recent decades is as much a historical accident as a natural outgrowth of conservative principles. I wish that at the time I’d read Kathryn Olmstead’s fine book Challenging the [...]

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When I covered the Republican National Convention in 2004, I kept tabs on the protest actions surrounding the convention via a handy-dandy Twitter-like text blasting service called TXTmob. Now those text messages are being subpoenaed by lawyers for New York City.  The messages themselves were relatively public—I was on the list, after all—and I’d be [...]

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In light of DNI Mike  Mukasey’s recent weepy plea for more surveillance power, invoking phantom difficulties acquiring Iraqi communications, I find myself wondering about his real audience.  Many of us have made the assumption, perhaps uncharitable, that Mukasey and company are overstating the obstacles they face in hopes of getting still broader statutory authority.  But [...]

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Over at The American Spectator, I wonder when conservatives learned to stop worrying and love executive wiretaps.

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One thing that’s recently become clear to me is that I really need to read a biography of J. Edgar Hoover. Anyone care to recommend one?

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I have been (slowly but surely) plugging through David Kris and J. Douglas Wilson’s massive but absolutely invaluable National Security Investigations & Prosecutions—and let me give them a free plug here: It’s not a cheap tome, but anyone who wants to talk seriously about FISA really must have this book on their desk. The more [...]

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Anyone notice this language in the new House FISA bill?

SEC. 406. SURVEILLANCE TO PROTECT THE UNITED STATES.
This Act and the amendments made by this Act shall not be construed to prohibit the intelligence community (as defined in section 3(4) of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 401a(4))) from conducting lawful surveillance that [...]

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