Blog of Rights
Jameel
Jaffer

Jaffer directed the National Security Project from 2007 – 2010 and is currently the Director of the ACLU's Center for Democracy. He has testified before Congress about issues relating to government surveillance and, since 2004, has served as a human rights monitor for the military commissions at Guantánamo. His book, Administration of Torture (co-authored with Open Society Justice Institute attorney Amrit Singh), was published by Columbia University Press in 2007. Prior to joining the ACLU, he clerked for Amalya L. Kearse, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada. He is a graduate of Williams College, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School. (Photo: Redwell Imaging)

03/29/2013
Targeted Killings

What the Government Should Disclose About Its Targeted Killing Program

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU at 11:36am

This post originally appeared on Politico.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently ruled that the Central Intelligence Agency may no longer refuse to acknowledge something that everyone knows to be true: the agency has "an interest" in the use of drones to carry out targeted killings. The CIA is unaccustomed to courts rejecting its secrecy claims, but in asking the courts to pretend that the agency might have no connection whatsoever to the targeted killing program, the agency dramatically overreached. Unsurprisingly, the appeals court was unwilling to give its "imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible."

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03/12/2013
U.S. Torture

American Torture and the 'Heroic Imagination'

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU & Larry Siems, The Torture Report at 11:55am

This was originally posted on The Huffington Post.

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

Trained in the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military interrogators and guards who tortured and dehumanized prisoners in U.S. custody after 9/11 were hardly without ethical bearings. But as Alberto Mora, former chief counsel of the Navy, predicted when he discovered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had authorized previously banned interrogation techniques,

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02/04/2013
Targeted Killings

The Justice Department’s White Paper on Targeted Killing

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU at 10:04pm

Michael Isikoff at NBC News has obtained a Justice Department white paper that purports to explain when it would be lawful for the government...

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06/07/2012
Targeted Killings

First the 'targeted killing' campaign, then the targeted propaganda campaign

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU & Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 11:10am

Originally posted on The Guardian.

A story in last week's New York Times painted a remarkably detailed picture of the US government's so-called "targeted killing" campaign, a campaign that involves the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to kill suspected insurgents and terrorists and, it turns out, many, many others, as well. The story, written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, discussed the CIA's choice of munitions, its efforts to avoid civilian casualties, and its method for calculating the number of civilians killed in any given strike. The story also underscored the extent to which President Obama himself is involved in overseeing the campaign – and even in selecting its targets.

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05/01/2012
Targeted Killings

Further Reflections About John Brennan's Targeted Killing Speech

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU at 11:48am

The president's chief counterterrorism advisor delivered a speech yesterday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. We issued a first reaction here. Here are some further thoughts:

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04/18/2012
Warrantless Wiretapping

ACLU Asks Supreme Court to Reject Government's Effort to Block Judicial Review of Surveillance Law

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU at 1:15pm

In 2008, Congress enacted a statute that authorized the National Security Agency to carry out dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications. Almost four years later, the statute — called the FISA Amendments Act — has yet to be reviewed by the courts, and, if the Obama administration has its way, the courts are unlikely ever to review it. In February, the administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn a court of appeals decision that would allow an ACLU challenge to the statute to go forward. Today we filed our brief in opposition, which asks the Supreme Court to let the appeals court's decision stand.

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03/15/2012
Patriot Act

Sens. Wyden and Udall Weigh in on ACLU Patriot Act FOIA Case

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU at 6:09pm

"Contrary to core principles of American democracy." That's how two U.S. senators describe the Justice Department's refusal to release a secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act.

Last year, we filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for records about the government's use and interpretation of one of the Patriot Act's most controversial provisions: Section 215. Some members of the Senate Intelligence Committee had suggested that the provision was being abused. "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act," Colorado Sen. Mark Udall said, "they will be stunned and they will be angry."

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02/15/2012
Warrantless Wiretapping

A Brewing Battle Over Warrantless Wiretapping

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU at 1:14pm

It's almost certain that we'll have a hard-fought battle over domestic surveillance this year, both in the courts and in Congress.

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01/20/2012

Could the Government Outlaw Lying?

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU at 1:12pm

Could the government outlaw lying? Not just lying that causes injury — lying that defames, for example, or defrauds — but could the government outlaw lying more generally? The Justice Department appears to think so. In a case called United States v. Alvarez, the government is asking the Supreme Court to hold that that the First Amendment doesn’t protect “calculated falsehoods.” Calculated falsehoods, the Justice Department argues, are generally valueless, and Congress should be able to criminalize them if it wants to.

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12/16/2011
Warrantless Wiretapping

RIP Hitch

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU at 3:53pm

Christopher Hitchens had many rare qualities – he was contrarian, original, devastatingly brilliant, skeptical of almost everything – and I take pride in the fact that he was once an ACLU client.  He was a plaintiff in our 2006 challenge to the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, a challenge that was sustained by the lower court but later dismissed on procedural grounds by a divided court of appeals.

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