Civil Liberties & Privacy

Is the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Surveillance Really That Significant?

by Tim Kelly March 13, 2013

In a remarkable achievement of legal sophistry, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against a constitutional challenge to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act. The 5–4 ruling this February upheld the federal law that authorizes the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on international telephone calls and emails in the so-called war on terror. The high court’s conservative bloc united to ...

The Nobel Peace Laureate with a Kill List

by Wendy McElroy March 12, 2013

On February 5, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney offered a rare defense of America’s drone policy. He stated, “These strikes are legal, they are ethical, and they are wise.” The rarity of his statement arises from the fact that the White House has stonewalled reporters on the drone program since its inception. The proximate cause of Carney’s ...

The Democratic Way of Killing: The President as Judge, Jury, and Executioner

by Doug Bandow March 1, 2013

One wonders whether Americans felt pride when they discovered that, according to the New York Times, their president was “a student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.” As a result, Barack Oba-ma believes that “he should take moral responsibility” for U.S. policy, including killing anyone and everyone seen as a terrorist threat to the United States. ...

Civil Liberties and the Free Society (Video)

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 28, 2013

On February 17, 2013, Jacob Hornberger spoke on behalf of Young Americans for Liberty at the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, D.C.

The War on Terrorism, the Constitution, and Civil Liberties (Video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation February 25, 2013

An Oracle of Tyranny

by Bruce Fein February 22, 2013

Charles Krauthammer’s defense in the Washington Post (Feb. 15, 2013) of President Obama’s limitless power to kill any living thing on the planet in the name of opposing terrorism may carry some charms as a catechism. But — to paraphrase an aspersion cast on the Charge of the Light Brigade — it is not law. Krauthammer rhetorically asks, ...

Drone Trust the Government

by Sheldon Richman February 12, 2013

“Covert” drone warfare requires a level of confidence in politicians that they will never deserve. In the Kentucky Resolutions, the 1798 protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts, Thomas Jefferson wrote, It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of ...

America: Extorting Data Access

by Wendy McElroy February 12, 2013

U.S. law enforcement wants companies to covertly install so-called computer back doors in the software they produce. This would allow the government to access information on any computer using the software without being detected and without going through an authentication process that protects privacy. As well, the untraceable e-wiretaps would effectively bypass the sticky question of obtaining ...

The War on Terrorism, the Constitution, & Civil Liberties: UC Boulder

by Future of Freedom Foundation November 19, 2012

From October 15-19, 2012 The Future of Freedom Foundation and the Young Americans for Liberty co-sponsored a College Civil Liberties Tour that brought a panel of three lawyers – a libertarian, a liberal, and a conservative – to five campuses on the West Coast. The three panelists, inluding Jacob G. Hornberger, Glenn Greenwald, Bruce Fein, and along with moderator ...

Supreme Court Considers the Warrantless Sniff

by Wendy McElroy October 24, 2012

Florida v. Jardines and Florida v. Harrisare scheduled to be heard by the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday, October 31. The cases pivot on whether the use of police dogs to detect illegal drugs violates the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of the person being sniffed. General background K-9 ...

Reading List for Attendees at FFF/YAL College Civil Liberties Tour

by Future of Freedom Foundation October 5, 2012

  Prepared by: Jacob Hornberger — President, The Future of Freedom Foundation Books Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic by Chalmers Johnson Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope by Chalmers Johnson American ...

Budgeting Leviathan

by Laurence M. Vance April 10, 2012

The U.S. government is the largest and most powerful government in the history of the world. But that stature comes with a price. Not only has the American government confiscated untold trillions of dollars in wealth from its citizens; it has borrowed trillions more and accumulated the greatest mountain of debt in human history. The federal leviathan has an ...