Do we care so much about whether and how the government accesses our data perhaps because the line between ourselves and the machines that generate the data is getting fuzzier? Perhaps the NSA disclosures have struck such a chord with so many people because on a visceral level we know what our law has not yet begun to recognize: that we are already juvenile cyborgs, and fast becoming adolescent cyborgs; we fear that as adult cyborgs, we will get from the state nothing more than the rights of the machine with respect to those areas of our lives that are bound up with the capabilities of the machine.
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Tools and Tradeoffs: Confronting U.S. Citizen Terrorist Suspects Abroad
Coauthored with Daniel Byman By its very name, the Hellfire missile promises to visit Biblical wrath upon those on its receiving end. On September 30, 2011, it delivered just that to Anwar Awlaki, the U.S.-born preacher and an operational leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who had plotted repeated attacks from his […]
Brookings Event on 2012 Election Results
Washington D.C., November 7, 2012 A wrap-up of Campaign 2012 with Brookings colleagues Thomas Mann, Isabel Sawhill, Jonathan Rauch, and Bob Kagan.
Detention, Interrogation and Trial of Terrorist Suspects — 10 Years Later
Jones Day LLP, April 12, 2012 This panel, featured during the 2012 National Security Symposium, will analyze, from myriad perspectives, U.S. policy and practice on these issues as we enter the second decade of the armed conflict.
Analogy to Feminism
American Enterprise Institute, February 22, 2012 Some slightly off-color remarks at AEI about Michael Greve’s excellent and challenging new book on federalism, The Upside-Down Constitution.
The Debate Over Military Commissions and the Reality
American Enterprise Institute, February 2, 2012 Comments at AEI about military commissions in our mythical debate, and their very different reality.
Constitution 3.0: Freedom, Technological Change and the Law
Brookings Institution, December 15, 2011 On December 13, the Governance Studies program at Brookings hosted a Judicial Issues Forum examining the scenarios posed in Constitution 3.0 and the challenge of adapting our constitutional values to the technology of the near future. Jeffrey Rosen and I gave an overview of the book and were joined by […]
Brookings ECPA Event
May 17, 2011 A panel event at Brooking on reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
Making Our Democracy Work: An Interview with Justice Stephen Breyer
November 10, 2010 This is an interview I conducted with Justice Stephen Breyer at the Brookings Institution on his book, Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View.
Predator Drones, Targeted Killing, and the Law: A Debate with Mary Ellen O’Connell
October 25, 2010, Fordham Law School This is a debate I took part in with Mary Ellen O’Connell at International Law Weekend back in 2010. I wrote about it at some length in Lawfare in the days after it took place: In reading Mary Ellen O’Connell’s writings on targeted killing in preparation for our debate this weekend, I […]
Benjamin Wittes 