The Brennan Center for Justice released today a new report titled “National Security and Local Police.”  They conducted surveys of more than a dozen major police departments and their affiliated state or...

Over at Security States,  I have this piece up, about the proliferation of city- and state-operated surveillance technologies---and the need to pair collection rules for these technologies with effective...

Earlier today I posted a commentary on "Boston Bombings: Local Police and Counterterrorism Intelligence," based on reported claims that the FBI failed to pass on important threat information to the Bosto...

The New York Times had a story yesterday headlined “F.B.I. Didn’t Tell Boston Police of Warning on Brother”: Police Commissioner Edward Davis said that though some of his officers worked with the F.B.I. ...

I'm not at all happy that today's news out of upstate New York proves the point that Jack and I (and a cast of dozens) have tried to make about domestic use of lethal force, but it's worth pointing out t...

Carrie Cordero, Georgetown’s Director of National Security Studies and a former Justice Department official, writes in with the following thoughts on fusion centers: As Matt Waxman noted last month, the...

A few weeks ago I posed the following questions in relation to the Constitution Project's report on state and major urban area intelligence Fusion Centers, which DHS set up and funded after 9/11: One rea...

The Constitution Project today released a new report titled Recommendations for Fusion Centers: Preserving Privacy & Civil Liberties While Protecting Against Crime & Terrorism.  In the wake of the 9/11 a...

Yesterday the NYPD unveiled its Domain Awareness System, which aggregates and analyzes existing public safety data streams (including license plate readers and video surveillance camera systems) in real ...

As I’ve argued previously here (at length) and here (briefly), if you are interested in government counterterrorism intelligence activities and privacy, don’t just pay attention at the federal level – th...

Based on a longer article I’d written on this topic, the Hoover Institution published today my essay “Policing Terrorism”, in its institutional journal, Defining Ideas. Here’s how it begins: In recent mo...

In two earlier posts I’ve focused on some of the particular issues that may arise during the Senate’s consideration of a comprehensive cybersecurity bill.  The focus on the Senate is apt, inasmuch as Sen...