But it’s a state secret

Via KD, it seems the CIA lied about ’state secrets’ and the court found out. The judge was not happy:
The judge also criticized CIA Director Leon Panetta, saying he’s given conflicting accounts about what should be revealed in the case. The ruling led to the unsealing Monday of more than 200 unclassified versions of classified [...]

A real world question about torture

People who defend torture always seem to come around to the ticking time bomb question (in fact, the Bush administration thought a nuke had been smuggled into NY City). The idea that we should shape our policy around a on in a billion happenstance doesn’t seem to bother them (if a person saved New York [...]

Obama and State Secrets

In this morning’s speech, President Obama mostly hit the right notes but basically called groups like the ACLU stupid:
We see that, above all, in how the recent debate has been obscured by two opposite and absolutist ends. On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed [...]

More on Binyam Mohamed

Back in February, the Obama administration had argued that a case against Boeing should be dropped because it might reveal state secrets. They lost that argument with an appropriate judicial rebuke:
The court said the government could ask judges to conduct a case-by-case review of whether the disclosure of specific documents would jeopardize national security. But [...]

Bush Justice Department memos released

The memos written by the the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Council have been released by President Obama. This is a good thing, but Obama is still holding to this:
This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and [...]

Obama: it’s ok, we no longer call them enemy combatants

President Obama has said that he will close Guantanamo and will abide by international law. Sounds good, but it’s not obvious that he’s actually going to change things (there are links to the actual documents there):
But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects [...]

Bush vs. Obama on State secrets

The Justice Department has now released some of the memos written after 9/11 by the Bush administration. Some of it is simply stunning:
The legal memos written by the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after [...]

al-Marri indicted

Via Hilzoy, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri  is going to be tried in a criminal court. This is mostly good news, it brings another person out of indefinite imprisonment without any cause shown, but:
Indicting him in a federaldistrict court in central Illinois could avert a Supreme Court ruling that would tie the Obama administration’s hands in [...]

More on ‘State Secrets’

I talked about the Binyam Mohamed yesterday. Since then, the NY Times has put out an article with this important bit (bold added):
“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent [...]

Obama and State Secrets

Last Thursday, I said that I was a little worried because the Obama administration had continued a Bush administration policy of using a ’state secrets’ argument to dismiss cases. Then I said that we would see more with their arguments in the Binyam Mohamed case. That happened today and now I’m definitely worried:
A year ago the [...]

Torture and State Secrets

This makes me a little worried that President Obama might not be for open government as much as he said:
Two British High Court judges ruled against releasing documents describing the treatment of a British detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison, but made clear their reluctance, saying that the United States had threatened to withhold intelligence cooperation [...]

Math and security searches

Via this NY Times article, here’s an article by William Press on the math for the optimal strategy for things like airport searches (the article is free to look and uses only higher level undergraduate math). It’s first run through assumes that the government has some assigned probability that a person is a terrorist (where there [...]

al-Marri, detentions, and torture

Via Glenn Greenwald, I see that President Obama is also reviewing the al-Marri case:
The President instructed the Attorney General, the Secretaries of Defense, State, and Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence to conduct a review of the status of the detainee Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri who is currently held at the Naval Brig [...]

They’re Listening

You know how the Bush administration claimed that they were only listening to terrorists with the phone taps? Well,
Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept [...]

al-Marri and Indefinite Detentions

Update: Here’s my analysis of the decision (I don’t have any background in law, so take it with a grain of salt), with the first three points unanimous:

legal US residents have the same rights as US citizens, for the rights that were integral to the case
the President does not have inherent powers to detain US [...]

US and EU Compete

The US and EU seem to be competing in the ‘how badly can we treat immigrants’ game. The US wins in the abuse of artists with bits like these:
Consider the case of the French group Fancy, which tried this past March to play with Justice on the MySpace Music Tour. Three of the members got [...]

‘Fair’ Trials

In a move that I’m sure surprises no one, promises of a fair and open trial for the Guantanamo prisoners won’t be completely fair and open:
Though the top legal adviser for the commissions process, Air Force Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, has said the trials will be “fair, just, and transparent” and that detainees would have [...]

American Hospitality

Here’s another fun American immigration/foreign visitor story:
But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in [...]

Guantanamo

This article in the Boston Globe looks at the case of an ex-detainee who drove a car bomb into an Iraqi police station and the announcments by the Defense Department:
“There is an implied future risk to US and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo,” said Navy Commander Jeff Gordon, [...]

NSA, You Suck

Via TPM’s Paul Kiel, the Wall Street Journal reports:
According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and [...]