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New and newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: Legal Background, January 3, 2014 National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: A Glimpse at the Legal Background, January 3, 2014

New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. Perjury Under Federal Law: A Brief Overview, January 28, 2014 Perjury Under Federal Law: A Sketch of the Elements, January 28, 2014

Previously, with narrow exceptions, an intelligence agency was permitted to disseminate information gathered from court-approved wiretaps only after deleting irrelevant private details and masking the names of innocent Americans who came into contact with a terrorism suspect. The Raw Take order significantly changed that system, documents show, allowing counterterrorism analysts at the N.S.A., the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. to share unfiltered personal information.

The leaked documents that refer to the rulings, including one called the “Large Content FISA” order and several more recent expansions of powers on sharing information, add new details to the emerging public understanding of a secret body of law that the court has developed since 2001. The files help explain how the court evolved from its original task — approving wiretap requests — to engaging in complex analysis of the law to justify activities like the bulk collection of data about Americans’ emails and phone calls.“These latest disclosures are important,” said Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “They indicate how the contours of the law secretly changed, and they represent the transformation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court into an interpreter of law and not simply an adjudicator of surveillance applications.”

The number of Americans whose unfiltered personal information has been shared among agencies is not clear. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the court has approved about 1,800 FISA orders each year authorizing wiretaps or physical searches — which can involve planting bugs in homes or offices, or copying hard drives — inside the United States. But the government does not disclose how many people had their private conversations monitored as a result.

In June 2013, the Guardian newspaper, utilizing documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, a former employee of a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, reported that the FBI had obtained a ninety-day order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) requiring Verizon Business to provide the NSA daily so-called telephone metadata on all their customers’ communications, although none were suspected of a connection with international terrorism or other wrongdoing. Later public revelations established that the order had been renewed thirty-six times since May 2006, and that companion FISC orders had been directed to all major telecommunications companies. This unprecedented intrusion into the activities that citizens heretofore considered private and personal is effected without any suspicion and without any limitation to information related to some known threat from a foreign actor considered dangerous to the United States. While the FISC has uniformly upheld the constitutionality of the dragnet telephony metadata and search program of the NSA in non-adversary proceedings, Article III courts are divided at present. The United States Supreme Court has recently declared that the Fourth Amendment should be interpreted today to secure the same level of privacy protection as was reasonably expected of citizens when the Amendment was ratified in 1792. In making that assessment, law enforcement resources, investigative priorities, and technological and jurisdictional limitations on the government are all pertinent. As elaborated in the analysis linked below, the historical interpretation of the Fourth Amendment’s privacy guarantees suggests that the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata violates the Constitution.   Click here to view The Rutherford Institute's historic analysis of the Fourth Amendment as it relates to the NSA's surveillance activities.

The Government Is Breaking the Law By Failing to Prosecute Torture President Ronald Reagan signed a treaty legally requiring the U.S. to prosecute everyone who authorizes torture. Specifically, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (signed by the U.S. under Ronald Reagan) provides: Article 2 1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. 2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. 3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture. . . .

Article 4 1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture. Article 7 1. The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution. Article 15 Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made. This is not some non-binding, touchy-feeley resolution … it is the law of the land.

Specifically, Article 6 of the United States Constitution dictates: This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. On May 20, 1988 – as he was transmitting the Treaty to the Senate – Reagan said: The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today. The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called “universal jurisdiction.” Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

The last few weeks and months have been awash in media coverage of two cases before magistrate judges involving the federal government seeking to use the All Writs Act to compel Apple’s cooperation with ongoing criminal investigations. The older case, in the Eastern District of New York, involves a drug case where the phone’s owner has pleaded guilty to the charges against him. The more recent case, in the Central District of California, involves an iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the alleged San Bernardino shooters. While the two cases involve different different phone models, operating systems, alleged crimes, and legal postures, they touch on similar questions related to the scope of the All Writs Act. In an attempt to create a one-stop shop for our coverage and the related documents and some useful sources, we’ve compiled this readers’ guide. We will update it as the cases progress to include the latest filings and posts, so check back for more as things unfold.