Yesterday, Edward Snowden officially joined Twitter!
Scholars at the Cato Institute have written extensively about Snowden and the role he has played in the debate about government surveillance. He even made a surprise appearance at last year’s Cato Institute’s Surveillance conference!
Hey, Mr. Snowden, if you see this maybe you could follow Cato Institute on Twitter?
The “security vs. liberty” strawman argument remains the rhetorical weapon of choice for National Security State officials terrified by the spread of public encryption technologies, a development accelerated by Edward Snowden’s revelations of illegal mass surveillance by the U.S. government.
But, recent court filings by the Department of Justice and federal court records show that encryption use by criminal elements has not precluded successfully breaking up theoretical or actual terrorist plots, including those involving U.S. citizens here at home.
Learn more…..
The data released from the Ashley Madison hack has been making headlines. This past July, Cato’s Julian Sanchez was quoted in a rollingstone article on the hack and cybersecurity.
When Kelly Rindfleisch started working for Governor Scott Walker — first as a policy analyst then his deputy chief of staff — she didn’t expect all of her personal emails to be the subject of a search into the criminal investigation of another person, but that’s Wisconsin politics for you.
The House Judiciary Committee is considering the third version of the USA Freedom Act in the last two years. In its current form, the bill effectively acts as if the Snowden revelations and several independent reviews of the PATRIOT Act Sec. 215 metadata program never happened.
The bill grants the government sweeping “emergency” collection authority not tied to an imminent threat of death or bodily harm, and allows the government to retain U.S. Person call detail records. It fails to address bulk collection and retention of US Person records, lacks mandatory US Person data destruction and audit compliance provisions, contains no protections for national security whistleblowers, has no bar on government-imposed “back doors”, does not bar targeting based solely on use of internet anonymizing technology, and does not address the recently revealed DEA telephony metadata program.
In a ten-and-a-half-hour-long filibuster over the NSA surveillance programs authorized under the Patriot Act yesterday, Sen. Rand Paul cited analysis by former CIA analyst and current Cato policy analyst Patrick G. Eddington.
“One thing is certain: the fight over reforming our nation’s surveillance laws is about to get much more intense, and quickly,” said Eddington.
The NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ “telephony metadata” under Section 215 of the Patriot Act invades privacy, doesn’t work, and doesn’t even comport with the text of the Patriot Act itself. It’s time for it to end. Cato scholars Julian Sanchez and Patrick Eddington explain why in this short video.
“Congress can’t force states to create a national identity system and there’s no penalty for not creating one, so states shouldn’t do it.”
— catoinstitute Senior Fellow Jim Harper
May 11, 2015 marked the 10 year anniversary of the REAL ID Act. This short video explains why states should not waste money attempting to comply.
In a ruling certain to profoundly shape the ongoing debate over surveillance reform in Congress, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that the National Security Agency’s indiscriminate collection of Americans’ telephone calling records exceeds the legal authority granted by the Patriot Act’s controversial section 215, which is set to expire at the end of this month.
Comments Cato scholar Julian Sanchez, “While the court didn’t reach the crucial question of whether the program violates the Fourth Amendment, the ruling gives civil libertarians good reason to hope that a massive and egregious violation of every American’s privacy will finally come to an end.”
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