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.
In criminal law, police perjury, sometimes euphemistically called "testilying", is the act of a police officer knowingly giving false testimony. It is typically used in a criminal trial to "make the case" against defendants believed by the police to be guilty when irregularities during the suspects' arrest or search threaten to result in their acquittal. It also can be extended to encompass substantive misstatements of fact to convict those whom the police believe to be guilty, procedural misstatements to "justify" a search and seizure, or even the inclusion of statements to frame an innocent citizen. More generically, it has been said to be "[l]ying under oath, especially by a police officer, to help get a conviction."
R v Aubrey, Berry and Campbell, better known as the ABC Trial, was a trial conducted in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, of three men for offences under the Official Secrets Act 1911. The men were two libertarian journalists of a similar political viewpoint as much of the Labour government, and a resigned GCHQ source seeking to heighten scrutiny of government-authorised wire-tapping and limit the work of the American espionage agency, the CIA, in Britain. These aims were furthered in the following two decades achieved through detailed parliamentary scrutiny into and regular reports as to the work of security services, a Freedom of Information Committee and regulation of wire-tapping. Aside from very limited reportage from the Central Criminal Court, its early analysis comes in the account of one of its investigative-journalist defendants, Duncan Campbell, in the annual journal Socialist Register.
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.
The USA PATRIOT Act was passed by the United States Congress in 2001 as a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. It has ten titles, each containing numerous sections. Title II: Enhanced Surveillance Procedures granted increased powers of surveillance to various government agencies and bodies. This title has 25 sections, with one of the sections containing a sunset clause which sets an expiration date, December 31, 2005, for most of the title's provisions. This was extended twice: on December 22, 2005 the sunset clause expiration date was extended to February 3, 2006 and on February 2 of the same year it was again extended, this time to March 10.
Reggie Barnett Walton is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He is a former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
NSA warrantless surveillance — also commonly referred to as "warrantless-wiretapping" or "-wiretaps" — was the surveillance of persons within the United States, including U.S. citizens, during the collection of notionally foreign intelligence by the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. In late 2001, the NSA was authorized to monitor, without obtaining a FISA warrant, phone calls, Internet activities, text messages and other forms of communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lays within the U.S.
The American Bar Association passed resolutions on the USA PATRIOT Act that asked the U.S. Government "to conduct a thorough review of the implementation of the powers granted to the Executive Branch under the Act before considering legislation that would extend or further expand such powers ...." and "to conduct regular and timely oversight including public hearings ... to ensure that government investigations undertaken pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ... do not violate the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution ...." They also set up a website to discuss issues in relation to the Act, and thus the Patriot Debates were born, where various people debated specific sections.
John Deacon Bates is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He was appointed by President George W. Bush in December 2001, and has adjudicated several cases directly affecting the office of the President. Bates served as Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, from July 1, 2013 to January 5, 2015, after which he returned to full-time service as a District Judge.
MAINWAY is a database maintained by the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) containing metadata for hundreds of billions of telephone calls made through the largest telephone carriers in the United States, including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
Clyde Roger Vinson was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Until May 3, 2013, he was also a member of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Bernard Joseph Edward Collaery is an Australian barrister, lawyer and former politician. Collaery was a member of the Australian Capital Territory's first Legislative Assembly for the Residents Rally party, from 1989 to 1992. He served as Deputy Chief Minister and Attorney-General from 1989 to 1991 in the Kaine Alliance Government.
The Justice and Security Act 2013 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, firstly to provide for oversight of the Security Service (MI5), the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and other parts of the UK intelligence community, on intelligence or security matters; secondly to provide for the establishment of closed material procedures (CMP) in relation to certain civil proceedings; and thirdly to prevent the making of court orders for the disclosure of what the government deems to be sensitive information.
Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, 568 U.S. 398 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that Amnesty International USA and others lacked standing to challenge section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as amended by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008.
PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD US-984XN. PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google LLC and Apple under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. Among other things, the NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier, and to get data that is easier to handle.
In Re Electronic Privacy Information Center, 134 S.Ct. 638 (2013), was a direct petition to the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the National Security Agency's (NSA) telephony metadata collection program. On July 8, 2013, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a petition for a writ of mandamus and prohibition, or a writ of certiorari, to vacate an order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in which the court compelled Verizon to produce telephony metadata records from all of its subscribers' calls and deliver those records to the NSA. On November 18, 2013, the Supreme Court denied EPIC's petition.
The Australia–East Timor spying scandal began in 2004 when the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) clandestinely planted covert listening devices in a room adjacent to the East Timor (Timor-Leste) Prime Minister's Office at Dili, to obtain information in order to ensure Australia held the upper hand in negotiations with East Timor over the rich oil and gas fields in the Timor Gap. Even though the East Timor government was unaware of the espionage operation undertaken by Australia, negotiations were hostile. The first Prime Minister of East Timor, Mari Alkatiri, bluntly accused the Howard government of plundering the oil and gas in the Timor Sea, stating:
"Timor-Leste loses $1 million a day due to Australia's unlawful exploitation of resources in the disputed area. Timor-Leste cannot be deprived of its rights or territory because of a crime."
Open justice is a legal principle that requires that judicial proceedings be conducted in a transparent manner and with the oversight of the people, so as to safeguard the rights of those subject to the power of the court and to allow for the scrutiny of the public in general. The term has particular emphasis in legal systems based on British law, such as in the United Kingdom, Commonwealth countries such as South Africa and Canada and Australia, and former British colonies such as the United States. The term has several closely related meanings: it is seen as a fundamental right guaranteeing liberty; it describes guidelines for how courts can be more transparent; and it sometimes identifies an ideal situation. In a courtroom, it means steps to promote transparency such as letting the public see and hear trials as they happen in real time, televising trials as they happen, videotaping proceedings for later viewing, publishing the content and documents of court files, providing transcripts of statements, making past decisions available for review in an easy-to-access format, publishing decisions, and giving reporters full access to files and participants so they can report what happens. The principle includes efforts to try to make what happens in the court understandable to the public and the press.
Witness J, referred to in court documents by the placeholder name Alan Johns and in custody as Prisoner 123458, is a former Australian intelligence officer who was secretly tried and imprisoned in 2019 for communicating sensitive information over an insecure channel. Limited information about his identity and conviction has been made public.
David William McBride is an Australian whistleblower and former British Army major and Australian Army lawyer. In 2016, McBride provided the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with documents that contained information about war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
