Last week, the Boston Globe reported that former Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Christina Corda lost her sex discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, the county DA. Corda, 34, had alleged that District Attorney Dan Conley fired her because she repeatedly raised the...
In his first public comments on the US drone campaign in Pakistan, President Obama described it as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists who are trying to go in and harm Americans, hit American...
Far-right extremists (FRE) killed 245 people in the United States between the years 1990 and 2014, while ideological extremists affiliated with al-Qaida or associated movements (AQAM) killed 62 people in the country during the same time period. The figures, which exclude both...
A Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) “quarterly threat assessment” dated January 2016 and marked “unclassified/not for public release,” but posted publicly online, lists “animal rights and environmental extremists” and “anarchist extremists” as “groups [that] represent a significant domestic terrorist threat.” Animal rights activists, environmentalists,...
For years, the FBI has begged congress to address what it says is a “going dark” problem. In July 2015, FBI director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee law enforcement needs broader powers to force companies to build “backdoors” into their encrypted systems....
Torture is a subject of debate in the 2016 GOP presidential primary campaign. Last week, republicans debated whether waterboarding is torture (it is), and whether they would “bring it back” if they were elected president. Donald Trump said he would not only...
Two big ACLU lawsuits are in the news this week. First, stingrays. My colleagues at the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) successfully sued the NYPD to force the release of documents pertaining to the department’s use of controversial cell site simulators,...
This week I have the pleasure of speaking onstage with two policy experts I respect very much. Tonight, I’ll be talking about the legality and morality of US drone operations with Andrew Bacevich. Thursday night, I’m speaking at an event where Noam...
Live from slate.com: ISIS is so scary that we should think really hard about gutting the First Amendment.
Today FBI director James Comey spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee. His written testimony is remarkable not only for what it included, but also for what it excluded. I’m going to imitate the Harpers Index to illustrate his remarks in context.