Research

  • Politicizing National Security

    Aziz Huq

    We’ve been here before. As I and my colleague Fritz Schwarz detail in our new book, the Senate established the Church Committee because of a rising tide of evidence that the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies had been engaged in the serial, and seriously partisan, abuse of intelligence powers. This history, which Fritz and I will be discussing in a series of presentations in New York, Chicago and Washington from Tuesday onward ought to be required reading for a Congress that seems to have lost its way in a thicket of executive branch claims about what must be done and what we cannot do without.

    April 4, 2007
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling
    Checks & Balances

  • A Spying Policy Still Without Warrant

    Aziz Huq

    At first it was hailed as a victory for civil liberties. But last week's announcement that warrantless domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency has come to an end means less than it first appears.

    January 22, 2007
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling
    Checks & Balances

  • Continental Divide

    Aziz Huq

    In the run-up to last month's Dutch election, Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, known locally as "Iron Rita," declared her intention to pass a ban on religious garments that cover all of a woman's face. According to one Dutch parliamentarian, full face covering is so rare that the ban would apply to less than one hundred of the Netherlands' one million Muslims. Verdonk nevertheless insisted the ban was a needed from a "security standpoint." Picking up on recent comments by British parliamentarian Jack Straw, Verdonk elaborated that "people should be able to communicate with one another." Apparently, communication is impossible with a veiled woman.

    December 12, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling

  • Five Squandered Years

    Aziz Huq

    The United States has two main resources to combat terrorism: The hard power of military might, and the soft power of diplomacy that comes from convincingly claiming the moral high ground. Five years after the 9/11 attacks, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the Bush Administration has gutted both.

    October 4, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling

  • The Warrant's Out on Judges

    Aziz Huq, James Sample

    Within hours of her decision to hold the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program unconstitutional, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor was subjected to relentless personal criticism. Even in the mainstream press, she has been accused of "pos[ing] for the cameras" (the Wall Street Journal), charged with "blithely ignoring [her] own obligations" (The New York Times) and dismissed as having produced merely unscholarly "angry rhetoric" (The Washington Post). Such deeply personal invective directed at Judge Taylor drowned out commentary either applauding or disputing the merits of the decision.

    August 30, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling

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