David S. Kris | |
---|---|
3rd Assistant Attorney General for National Security | |
In office 2009–2011 | |
President | Barack Obama |
Preceded by | J. Patrick Rowan |
Succeeded by | Lisa Monaco |
Associate Deputy Attorney General | |
In office 2000–2003 | |
President | George W. Bush |
Personal details | |
Born | Brookline,Massachusetts,U.S. | September 28,1966
Education | Haverford College (BA) Harvard Law School (JD) |
David S. Kris (born September 28,1966) is an American lawyer. From 2009 to 2011,he served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division of the United States Department of Justice. He also served as the associate deputy attorney general for national security issues at the Department of Justice from 2000 to 2003.
Kris grew up in Brookline,Massachusetts. He received his undergraduate degree from Haverford College in 1988,and his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1991.
After completing law school,Kris clerked for United States Appeals Court Judge Stephen S. Trott on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. [1]
For eight years,Kris served in the criminal division in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Kris became an associate deputy attorney general for national security issues in 2000. [1] In 2003,Kris left the Department of Justice (DOJ) to become a counsel,chief ethics and compliance officer and senior vice president at Time Warner. He remained at Time Warner until rejoining the DOJ.
In 2009,President Barack Obama nominated Kris for assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's National Security Division,which was created in 2006. [2] The United States Senate confirmed Kris in a 97–0 vote on March 25,2009. [3] [4]
Kris attracted significant public attention when he released a 23-page legal memorandum,in his personal capacity,sharply criticizing the George W. Bush administration's legal argument that it had authority to conduct warrantless domestic wiretapping due to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists passed by Congress on September 18,2001. [5] [6] [7] Law professor Marty Lederman called Kris's memo "by a large measure the most thorough and careful—and,for those reasons,the most devastating—critique anyone has offered of the DOJ argument that Congress statutorily authorized the NSA program." [8] He also makes shorter arguments regarding the Fourth Amendment implications of the warrantless domestic spying and the administration's "unitary executive theory" of Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution. Kris wrote the memorandum in January 2006,and released it to journalists on March 8,2006. Kris had also exchanged a series of emails with Courtney Elwood,an associate counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,debating the legal arguments,which were released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center after obtaining them under the Freedom of Information Act. [9]
Kris had been a high-ranking DOJ lawyer in the Bush administration for several years,and had appeared before Congress to advocate for the administration's positions regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the USA PATRIOT Act. [10] He had furthermore previously appeared before Congress in his personal capacity,after leaving the DOJ,to continue advocating for the government to have enhanced flexibility under FISA and the PATRIOT Act. [11]
In 2011,Kris joined Intellectual Ventures as general counsel. [12]
The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),also called the FISA Court,is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil.
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.James Andrew Baker is a former American government official at the Department of Justice who served as general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and later served as deputy general counsel at Twitter,Inc. before being fired by Elon Musk in December 2022.
The Terrorist Surveillance Program was an electronic surveillance program implemented by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States in the wake of the September 11,2001 attacks. It was part of the President's Surveillance Program,which was in turn conducted under the overall umbrella of the War on Terrorism. The NSA,a signals intelligence agency,implemented the program to intercept al Qaeda communications overseas where at least one party is not a U.S. person. In 2005,The New York Times disclosed that technical glitches resulted in some of the intercepts including communications which were "purely domestic" in nature,igniting the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. Later works,such as James Bamford's The Shadow Factory,described how the nature of the domestic surveillance was much,much more widespread than initially disclosed. In a 2011 New Yorker article,former NSA employee Bill Binney said that his colleagues told him that the NSA had begun storing billing and phone records from "everyone in the country."
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Hepting v. AT&T,439 F.Supp.2d 974,was a class action lawsuit argued before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California,filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of customers of the telecommunications company AT&T. The plaintiffs alleged that AT&T permitted and assisted the National Security Agency (NSA) in unlawfully monitoring the personal communications of American citizens,including AT&T customers,whose communications were routed through AT&T's network.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is an independent agency within the executive branch of the United States government,established by Congress in 2004 to advise the President and other senior executive branch officials to ensure that concerns with respect to privacy and civil liberties in the United States are appropriately considered in the development and implementation of all laws,regulations,and executive branch policies related to terrorism.
Warrantless searches are searches and seizures conducted without court-issued search warrants.
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The FISA Amendments Act of 2008,also called the FAA and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008,is an Act of Congress that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It has been used as the legal basis for surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden in 2013,including PRISM.
Thomas Tamm is a public defender in Washington County,Maryland. He formerly worked as an attorney in the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) Office of Intelligence Policy and Review during 2004 when senior Justice officials responded to the warrantless NSA surveillance concerning eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. He was an anonymous whistleblower to The New York Times,making the initial disclosures which led to reporters winning Pulitzer Prizes in 2006. Although Maryland agreed to drop ethics charges against him in 2009 relating to those disclosures,and the USDOJ announced it had dropped its investigation in 2011,the D.C. Office of Bar Counsel announced in January 2016 that it had brought disciplinary charges against Tamm relating to those events. Despite some controversy with respect to politicization of that office and similar charges being brought to silence attorney whistleblowers especially beginning in 2014,Tamm in March 2016 agreed to public censure by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in order to allow him to proceed with his life and career.
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The President's Surveillance Program (PSP) is a collection of secret intelligence activities authorized by the President of the United States George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in 2001 as part of the War on Terrorism. Information collected under this program was protected within a Sensitive Compartmented Information security compartment codenamed STELLARWIND.
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