Democrats in Congress are proposing legislation to limit the authority of customs agents to search and duplicate Americans’ laptops, PDAs, and other electronic devices at border crossings. Read the rest of this entry »

After the 9/11 attacks, there were two main schools of thought about how to prevent the next terrorist incident. Read the rest of this entry »

Link to WTOP segment here.

A few days ago, a senior officer at the Pentagon called his intelligence officer into his office. The boss had heard a news report about China while driving to his office and wanted some answers. It wasn’t a tough assignment, given the news coverage, but there was a hitch. “There was plenty of information in the public domain about the topic,” recalls the intelligence officer, a 10-year veteran. “And yet, if there wasn’t some classified information cited in my report, the boss would never believe it was accurate.” Read the rest of this entry »

The debate over government secrecy can be reduced to a simple formula: the public’s right to know versus the government’s desire to protect the public. More often, it’s far less grandiose and far more nuanced. One of the oldest secrets that the government keeps is a recipe for invisible ink from the First World War, which it has gone to court to protect. Read the rest of this entry »