After a months-long investigation involving dozens of interviews with local and federal officials, the Associated Press has found that, since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the New York Police Department has transformed into one of the “most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies” in the United States, through its covert operations in Muslim neighborhoods designed to root out terrorist plots.
By Malik Ahmad Jalal* Click here to read the full text as a PDF The Roman Empire in Germania, the French in Algeria, the United States in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan all conjure up the myth that insurgencies cannot be defeated. In recent years, this notion has only been reinforced by NATO’s slow progress against the Taliban. Yet counterinsurgency strategies can, in fact, succeed. One of the most instructive examples is that of the Sri Lankan Army’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers, one of the most violent and persistent insurgent groups of the twentieth century. The Sri
By Vik Kanwar* — Click here to read the full text of the Review Essay Vik Kanwar reviews: P.W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (Penguin Press 2009), Ronald Arkin, Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots (Chapman & Hall 2009), William H. Boothby, Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict (Oxford University Press 2009), and Armin Krishnan, Killer Robots: The Legality and Ethicality of Autonomous Weapons (Ashgate Press 2009). * Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School (JGLS). O.P. Jindal Global University, National Capital Region of Delhi, India. Assistant Director, Centre on Public Law
By Phillip B. Heymann* — Click here to read the full text of the Essay In response to various scholarly commentaries, Professor Philip Heymann argues that applying the law of war outside of the “normal state-against-state context,” in order to justify military detention, involves an “increased risk of mistakes, unfairness, and resentment by our allies,” as “in the context of a traditional war,” the law of war would otherwise provide “protective conditions that are not present when the context changes to international terrorism.” With a proposed modification to the Speedy Trial Act, Professor Heymann argues that shifting to a law
By David D. Clark* and Susan Landau** — Click here to read the full text of the Essay As a result of increasing Internet insecurity — DDoS attacks, spam, cybercrime, and data theft — there have been calls for an Internet architecture that would link people to packets (the fundamental communications unit used in the Internet). The notion is that this technical “fix” would enable better investigations and thus deterrence of attacks. However, in the context in which the most serious national-security cybersecurity threat the US faces is data exfiltration from corporate and government sites by other jurisdictions, such a
By Eric Sandberg-Zakian* — Click here to read the full text of the Article Eric Sandberg-Zakian addresses nonmilitary preventive detention, a scheme that has gained support as a sensible alternative to holding suspected terrorists now that indefinite, unreviewable military detention is no longer an option. Such a program would empower the government to detain suspects who are potentially dangerous but cannot be shown to be proper targets of AUMF-authorized military force or proven guilty of criminal acts beyond a reasonable doubt. Sandberg-Zakian identifies two major constitutional challenges—one under the Suspension Clause and the other under the Supreme Court’s decision in
