Author Archive | Stewart Baker

I’m going to try live blogging the President’s remarks today on NSA.  I’ve never done this before, so don’t be surprised if the whole thing comes crashing down in the middle. 11:15:  The President gives us a few history lessons and a tour of intelligence policies of the last quarter century. 11:19 The President summarizes […]

Will Baude’s post on commandeering  prompts me to revisit the doctrine after a twenty-year absence.  I have fond memories of the doctrine, because it can be traced directly to an amicus brief that I wrote for the Council of State Governments in New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992). The original understanding of the […]

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, reviews foreign investments for national security risks.  It is now beyond doubt that Chinese investment is getting much closer scrutiny from CFIUS.  A total of ten transactions failed to survive review in 2012, according to a just-released Treasury report. That may not sound like […]

Matt Blaze, a well-known public cryptographer and NSA critic (but I repeat myself), offered what seemed like a modest concession in the relentless campaign against NSA intelligence gathering: The NSA’s tools are very sharp indeed, even in the presence of communications networks that are well hardened against eavesdropping. How can this be good news? It […]

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has written a letter to NSA’s director, asking whether the agency has spied on members of Congress.  It sounds like he’s uncovered a scandal, until you read the fine print.  It turns out that Sen. Sanders is simply asking whether NSA collects the metadata for calls made by members of Congress, […]

The New Yorker has a remarkably thought-provoking article on what some call the “neurobiology” of plants.  That’s a deliberately edgy way of pointing out just how much communicating and sensing and adapting plants do, all without anything resembling a brain. Some samples: Plants have evolved between fifteen and twenty distinct senses, including analogues of our five: […]

As 2013 ended and 2014 began, privacy professionals took a moment to look back and choose the year’s most dubious achievements in privacy law. The dubious achievement awards, also known as the Privies, were dominated by officials of the Obama Administration. The awards are a light-hearted way of expressing skepticism about the effort to write […]

I’m shocked to discover that the august Ninth Circuit has been tampering with the balloting for the Privies, perhaps hoping to save its own Judge Bybee from winning the award for “Dumbest Privacy Case” of 2014. The nomination was for a decision that exposed Google to liabilty for gathering wi-fi signals while driving by on […]

Voting for the 2014 Privy Awards for Dubious Achievement in Privacy Law will close at noon EST tomorrow, January 1, 2014.  You can read the nominations here, and cast your vote here. There are still some tight races, whether in voting by the public or by privacy professionals.  But there are differences between the two […]

Quick reactions to a couple of books I had a chance to read over the Christmas break. I can  recommend Company Man by John Rizzo.  Rizzo was one of the first lawyers at the CIA, and he recounts a thirty year career there with grace and a remarkable absence of rancor, even though he was denied […]

Voting for the 2014 Dubious Achievements in Privacy Law is almost done, and the race is heating up.  Who used privacy law most egregiously to serve power and privilege?  There are plenty of candidates, but the leaders this year are two:  On the one hand, the Chinese government, which adopted a privacy law and promptly […]

Usually it takes a couple of stories.  First foreign officials condemn reports that NSA has gathered intelligence on their government.  Then, later, they have to admit that, well, yes, they do sometimes spy on the United States. But Israel has taken chutzpah to new heights — simultaneously demanding that the United States stop spying on […]

As voting continues for the 2014 Privy Awards, here’s a peek at another closely watched matchup.  Which judge will win the coveted Privy for having written the dumbest privacy decision of the year? Just to make it interesting, the two judicial candidates are both from San Francisco, but Jay Bybee is a Republican appointee to […]

Voting continues in the Privy Award for Privacy Hypocrite of the Year, which features a partisan matchup. One nominee is Republican James (“You Hid Information From Me By Disclosing It at Briefings I Refused to Attend”)Sensenbrener. Another is Kathleen (“Harsh Privacy Penalties for Thee, But Not For Me”) Sebelius. Voting isn’t over, and the contest still […]

The Associated Press recently ran a long story about Robert Levinson,  a former FBI agent who disappeared while in Iran.  Levinson later showed up in Internet photos suggesting he was a hostage.  The AP story made clear that the former agent had a long relationship with the CIA and was likely working on a CIA […]