On December 13, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence adopted a roughly 6,000-page report that reviews the Central Intelligence Agency's detention and interrogation program as a part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts following the attacks of September 11, 2001.  Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine joined the committee's Democrats in voting to accept the report, and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) gave it a strong endorsement as a non-voting, ex officio member of the committee. 

In a statement following the vote, TCP President Virginia Sloan lauded the committee's action as an important first step in informing the American people about the acts that were carried out in their name.  She called for the declassification and release of the report, and also highlighted the upcoming release of TCP's Task Force's own report on detainee treatment.

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On December 28, the Senate adopted the FY2013 intelligence authorization act after removing most of the controversial and overbroad provisions intended to combat "leaks." Arguing that the legitimate interest of protecting government secrets needed to be balanced against the public's right to know, TCP was part of a coalition that earlier urged the Congress "to address the leaks of highly classified information with the widest possible public input into any legislation and with the most open process possible."  Among the provisions that the Senate removed from the final bill (S.3454) were restrictions on background briefings by government officials for the press and limits on media commentary by former government officials.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the anti-leak provisions were removed in order to expedite its passage.

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At a public meeting on December 6, the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), a congressionally created advisory board, released its report to the President on transforming the national security classification system. The report includes a series of recommendations to reform and modernize our nation's system for classifying national security secrets, which dates back to World War II and results in significant over-classification of government information. These include a recommendation to facilitate prompt declassification of information when the reason for classification was short-lived. TCP, along with a coalition of open government advocacy organizations, has been working with the PIDB to promote reforms that will improve government accountability and transparency, based on the report of TCP's Liberty and Security Committee on Reining in Excessive Secrecy: Recommendations for Reform of the Classification and Controlled Unclassified Information Systems.

The Boston Police Department (BPD) and a regional fusion center known as BRIC surveilled citizens and groups engaged in First Amendment protected activity, and subsequently created criminal intelligence reports on these political groups and leaders, according to a recent report by the ACLU of Massachusetts and National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts. TCP wrote to Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis to urge BPD and BRIC to end these intrusive surveillance practices and create comprehensive policies that provide for accountability, transparency, and respect for constitutional liberties. These recommendations were based on TCP's recent report, Recommendations for Fusion Centers: Preserving Privacy and Civil Liberties While Protecting Against Crime and Terrorism.  Some of the recommendations made by TCP mirrored earlier calls for reform from the local ACLU and National Lawyers Guild.

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In the waning days of the 112th Congress, the Senate voted to extend for five years the controversial FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008.  This law was initially passed to legalize a form of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program.  Under the FAA, the government may legally conduct broad scale foreign intelligence surveillance without obtaining any warrant. As long as the target is not a U.S. person (citizen or legal resident) or someone known to be located within the United States, nothing in the law prevents the collection of communications in which such a person is on the other end of the conversation. The government maintains that so long as the data are collected legally under the FAA authority, government agents may later use any communications involving Americans for any lawful purpose, in effect creating an end run around the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement.

Last September, The Constitution Project's Liberty and Security Committee released a Report on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, urging a variety of reforms to the law to avoid intrusions on Fourth Amendment rights.  The report also explained that little has been made public about the actual operation of the FAA surveillance program. In fact, the government has refused to estimate the number of Americans whose communications have been intercepted under the program or to disclose the opinions of the FISA court interpreting the law. TCP worked with a coalition of other privacy and civil liberties groups to promote greater transparency and further safeguards for Americans' constitutional rights but, as TCP President Virginia Sloan and Senior Counsel Sharon Bradford Franklin warned in a column in the Huffington Post, delay in considering the legislation until the final days of the session worked against responsible changes.

Several senators, including Wyden, Merkley, and Leahy, fought hard for amendments that would have increased transparency and accountability, but the Senate followed earlier action by the House and voted for a clean extension of the law.  Even though President Obama has signed the five-year extension into law, TCP will continue to work with its coalition partners to find ways to promote greater transparency and accountability regarding the operation of this law in the next Congress.

As reported in The Washington Post, Prince William County (Virginia) Circuit Court Judge Mary Grace O'Brien has ordered the release of Justin Wolfe, whose 2002 capital conviction was vacated by a federal court earlier this year. Through its Clearinghouse of New Voices, earlier this year TCP submitted an amicus brief in the Wolfe case, as well as coordinated writing and gathering signatories for a letter calling on Judge O'Brien to replace the special prosecutor in the case.

Judge O'Brien's order follows a federal district court judge's December 24, 2012, order that Virginia release Wolfe, citing prosecutor misconduct that irrevocably tainted the case, including the coercion of a key witness in the case and the withholding of exculpatory evidence in violation of the Constitution. Most recently, Wolfe's defense team cited a September 2012 visit Prince William County prosecutors made to a key witness shortly before recusing themselves from the case. Wolfe's attorneys alleged that the prosecutors threatened the witness with capital murder charges if he did not testify against Wolfe in a new trial. Late on January 3, the federal appeals court issued a ruling that it would hear additional arguments in the case, and Wolfe remains in jail.

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