The official report that has shaped the international debate about NSA surveillance "We cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking. Americans must never make the mistake of wholly 'trusting' our public officials."—The NSA Report This is the official report that is helping shape the international debate about the unprecedented surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. Commissioned by President Obama following disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden, and written by a preeminent group of intelligence and legal experts, the report examines the extent of NSA programs and calls for dozens of urgent and practical reforms. The result is a blueprint showing how the government can reaffirm its commitment to privacy and civil liberties—without compromising national security.

Renowned national security law scholar Laura Donohue traces the evolution of privacy law in the digital age, and pairs that account with a history of the growth of the national security state's intelligence apparatus over the last two decades.

In Terror in the Balance, Posner and Vermeule take on civil libertarians of both the left and the right, arguing that the government should be given wide latitude to adjust policy and liberties in the times of emergency. They emphasize the virtues of unilateral executive actions and argue for making extensive powers available to the executive as warranted. At a time when the 'struggle against violent extremism' dominates the United States' agenda, this important and controversial work will spark discussion in the classroom and intellectual press alike.

A Brookings Institution Press and the Computer Ethics Institute publication Can we safeguard our nation's security without weakening cherished liberties? And how does technology affect the potential conflict between these fundamental goals? These questions acquired renewed urgency in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They also spurred heated debates over such controversial measures as Total Information Awareness and the USA PATRIOT Act. In this volume, leading figures from the worlds of government, public policy, and business analyze the critical issues underlying these debates. The first set of essays examines the relationship between liberty and security and explores where the public stands on how best to balance the two. In the second section, the authors focus on information technology's role in combating terrorism, as well as tools, policies, and procedures that can strengthen both security and liberty at the same time. Finally, the third part of the book takes on a series of key legal issues concerning the restrictions that should be placed on the government's power to exploit these powerful new technologies. Contributors include Zoë Baird (Markle Foundation), James Barksdale (Barksdale Group), Bruce Berkowitz (Hoover Institution), Jerry Berman (Center for Democracy and Technology), Beryl A. Howell (Stroz Friedberg), Jon Kyl (U.S. Senate), Gilman Louie (In-Q-Tel), David Luban (Georgetown University), Richard A. Posner (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit), Marc Rotenberg (Electronic Privacy Information Center), James Steinberg (Brookings), Larry Thompson (Brookings), Gayle von Eckartsberg (In-Q-Tel), and Alan F. Westin (Columbia University).

This book brings together a range of diverse discussions about security in order to sustain a genuine critique of the subject. It is unique in its examination of the historical and political links between social security and national security and in its assessment of the way that emergency powers (as the most intense realisation of the rhetoric of 'national security') have been synthesised with 'normal' law.Among other ideas and concepts, Mark Neocleous discusses the place of security in the liberal tradition of political theory. Building on insights from Foucault and Marx, he argues that liberalism's central category is not liberty, but security. He also deals with the role of security in justifying the introduction and continuation of emergency powers through a historical excavation of the state of emergency, a political reading of the way emergency powers are only tangentially concerned with warfare, and a theoretical reading of the debate between Schmitt and Benjamin.

In seeking to evaluate the efficacy of post-9/11 homeland security expenses--which have risen by more than a trillion dollars, not including war costs--the common query has been, "Are we safer?" This, however, is the wrong question. Of course we are "safer"--the posting of a single security guard at one building's entrance enhances safety. The correct question is, "Are any gains in security worth the funds expended?"In this engaging, readable book, John Mueller and Mark Stewart apply risk and cost-benefit evaluation techniques to answer this very question. This analytical approach has been used throughout the world for decades by regulators, academics, and businesses--but, as a recent National Academy of Science study suggests, it has never been capably applied by the people administering homeland security funds. Given the limited risk terrorism presents, expenses meant to lower it have for the most part simply not been worth it. For example, to be considered cost-effective, increased American homeland security expenditures would have had each year to have foiled up to 1,667 attacks roughly like the one intended on Times Square in 2010--more than four a day. Cataloging the mistakes that the US has made--and continues to make--in managing homeland security programs, Terror, Security, and Money has the potential to redirect our efforts toward a more productive and far more cost-effective course.

Did America's democratic convictions "change forever" after the terrorist attacks of September 11? In the wake of 9/11, many pundits predicted that Americans' new and profound anxiety would usher in an era of political acquiescence. Fear, it was claimed, would drive the public to rally around the president and tolerate diminished civil liberties in exchange for security. Political scientist Darren Davis challenges this conventional wisdom in Negative Liberty, revealing a surprising story of how September 11 affected Americans' views on civil liberties and security. Drawing on a unique series of original public opinion surveys conducted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and over the subsequent three years, Negative Liberty documents the rapid shifts in Americans' opinions regarding the tradeoff between liberty and security, at a time when the threat of terrorism made the conflict between these values particularly stark. Theories on the psychology of threat predicted that people would cope with threats by focusing on survival and reaffirming their loyalty to their communities, and indeed, Davis found that Americans were initially supportive of government efforts to prevent terrorist attacks by rolling back certain civil liberties. Democrats and independents under a heightened sense of threat became more conservative after 9/11, and trust in government reached its highest level since the Kennedy administration. But while ideological divisions were initially muted, this silence did not represent capitulation on the part of civil libertarians. Subsequent surveys in the years after the attacks revealed that, while citizens' perceptions of threat remained acute, trust in the government declined dramatically in response to the perceived failures of the administration's foreign and domestic security policies. Indeed, those Americans who reported the greatest anxiety about terrorism were the most likely to lose confidence in the government in the years after 2001. As a result, ideological unity proved short lived, and support for civil liberties revived among the public. Negative Liberty demonstrates that, in the absence of faith in government, even extreme threats to national security are not enough to persuade Americans to concede their civil liberties permanently. The September 11 attacks created an unprecedented conflict between liberty and security, testing Americans' devotion to democratic norms. Through lucid analysis of concrete survey data, Negative Liberty sheds light on how citizens of a democracy balance these competing values in a time of crisis.