Was the extraordinary display of force in Boston last month, which included a shootout with the suspects and a lockdown of the metropolitan area, an appropriate response to a terrorist threat? Or did it unnecessarily put civilians and law enforcement officers in jeopardy? Continue reading…

My op-ed in today’s New York Times looks at a decade of secret government surveillance and why we’re still powerless against it.

Could “total information awareness” have prevented the killings in Colorado? No. Here’s why.

A just-published paper offers new insights and intriguing details about the New York Times’ 2005 blockbuster on government spying. More here.

Here’s the first thing you need to know about a reported “cyber attack” against natural gas pipeline operators that was revealed last week: It wasn’t actually an attack. More here.    

Have a bunch of Silicon Valley computer geeks figured out how to stop terrorists?

As aircraft and weapons have become more precise, human beings have become less essential to the conduct of war. The rise of unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly known as drones, promises to push human beings further out of the loop. This essay is part of the Hoover Institution’s Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security and […]

No one asks, “Where were you on 9/10?” and most people don’t remember. It’s only in hindsight that the details of a thoroughly ordinary day seem so remarkable.

I joined NPR’s Scott Simon recently for a discussion about unmanned aircraft, and whether we’ll soon  be seeing tiny drones flying around American cities. The full audio is here.

The Watchers is on sale today in paperback. You can pick up a copy in your favorite bookstore or online. It’s got a nifty new cover, as well as a new afterword on the Christmas Day bombing attempt. That event occurred as the hardcover was going to press, so we couldn’t work it in. I’m glad it’s in the new version, because it ties up the theme of the whole book very nicely.

Here are some links to bookstores selling the paperback:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Borders

Powell’s

IndieBound

Penguin