Author name: Branden Loizides

By John Thorlin, NSJ Staff Editor – In Probing Secrets: The Press and Inchoate Liability for Newsgathering Crimes (in the Spring 2009 issue of the American Journal of Criminal Law) Professor William E. Lee of the University of Georgia examines the legality of soliciting or possessing classified information. The issue became a controversial one in the wake of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spy scandal in 2005.  AIPAC lobbyists were charged with violating the Espionage Act by conspiring with a Defense Department official to pass classified information to reporters and Israeli government officials.  In May 2009, the government […]

By Brian Itami, NSJ Staff Editor – It is increasingly likely that the U.S. government will use military commissions to help bring about the closure of its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and to help resolve the question of what to do with the prison’s remaining detainees.  As reported by the Washington Post on March 5th, President Obama’s advisers plan to recommend that Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) and four accomplices be tried before a military tribunal, a little over a month after the Department of Justice withdrew charges from a military court in preparation for a transfer to the Southern

As the intensity of the unacknowledged U.S. drone campaign against al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan has continued to increase throughout 2009 and into 2010, questions about the drone program have grown louder.  To preserve the legitimacy and effectiveness of drones as an instrument of U.S. security policy, it is essential that government officials carefully evaluate and address the legal, moral, practical, and strategic concerns of critics. Concerns about the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones to conduct targeted killings falls into two related categories: moral and legal questions concerning the legitimacy of drone operations and practical considerations

On Saturday, February 27th, President Obama signed a one-year extension of the three expiring sections of the USA PATRIOT Act.  These sections are Section 215 (the so-called “library records” provision), Section 206 (involving “roving wiretaps”), and Section 207 (the so-called “lone-wolf” provision).  Last week, both the House and Senate voted to extend the sections without change, despite the fact that both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees had extensively debated and passed bills last year that would have made significant changes to these provisions.  In addition to amending these sections, the House and Senate bills would have added significant limitations