American Civil Liberties Union

Last week served as yet another reminder of the threats posed to Americans' privacy by the post-Patriot Act surveillance state...

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."

Every year, the FBI issues tens of thousands of “national security letters”—or NSLs—demanding that internet service providers, telephone companies, credit card companies, and others hand over information about their customers if it is “relevant” to a counterterrorism or counter-intelligence investigation. That information could include the web sites we visit, the email addresses of our contacts, or even information linking us to our anonymous political speech online. This practice has been shrouded in secrecy, though, because the FBI gags recipients of NSLs—preventing companies from telling their customers that the government has asked for records about them.

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