Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Beyond Snowden
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://watson.brown.edu/people/fellow/edgar * https://www.brookings.edu/book/beyond-snowden/ * https://www.bu.edu/hic/profile/timothy-h-edgar/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2016091938
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016091938
HEADING: Edgar, Timothy H.
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035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca10523249
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100 1_ |a Edgar, Timothy H.
670 __ |a Panel VI: Patriot Act issues, 2005 |b video description (Tim H. Edgar)
670 __ |a Brown University Watson Institute, viewed July 13 2016 |b (Timothy H. Edgar is a visiting fellow at the Institute. His work focuses on the unique policy challenges posed by growing global cyber conflict, particularly in reconciling security interests with fundamental values, including privacy and Internet freedom)
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Dartmouth College, B.A.; Harvard Law School, J.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Brown University’s executive master in cybersecurity program, academic director for law and policy, 2013—. The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, senior fellow. Lawfare, contributing editor. Worked formerly as the deputy for civil liberties for the National Security Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union from 2001-06, as the deputy for civil liberties for the director of national intelligence from 2006-09, and clerk for Judge Sandra Lynch of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
WRITINGS
Contributor to numerous periodicals, including Wall Street Journal, Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and Wired.
SIDELIGHTS
Timothy H. Edgar is a writer, academic director for law and policy for Brown University’s executive master in cybersecurity program, and a former national security and intelligence official.
Edgar began working for the American Civil Liberties Union just before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centers, and he spent the next five years helping the organization fight against human rights abuses in the United States’ ensuing war on terror. In 2006 Edgar began working for the National Security Agency (NSA) as the community’s first deputy for civil liberties. In this position he advised the director of national intelligence during the George W. Bush administration.
In 2009 Edgar moved to the White House to aid President Barack Obama on privacy issues in cybersecurity policy. During this time he worked with the newly created National Security Council, the function of which was to protect the privacy of American citizens. In 2013 Edgar left the White House to launch a professional cybersecurity degree program at Brown University.
Edgar is a senior fellow at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He is also an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. His work at Georgetown focuses on global cyber conflict policy challenges, particularly as related to protecting values, privacy, and Internet freedom.
In Beyond Snowden, Edgar makes the argument that while civil liberties advocates and the NSA may seem to be in opposition, in reality they share fundamentally similar values and concerns. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews wrote that Edgar is “well-versed in, and sympathetic to, the concerns of both civil liberties advocates and the national security establishment.”
Edgar asserts that the NSA’s surveillance programs, as exposed by Edward Snowden and the Obama administration, are a real threat to worldwide privacy. At the same time, he suggests that surveillance programs, if held to strict standards of accountability, transparency, and human rights protections, can be compatible with democratic values. A contributor to Publishers Weekly noted that, with his cybersecurity expertise, “Edgar provides an insider’s perspective on the government’s internal debates.” Edgar explains that many of the NSA’s rules and policies that are intended to prevent the agency from spying on American citizens are well-intended but outdated. He notes that reforms were made during the Obama era, but there is much room for growth.
Edgar argues that the best way to improve American privacy is to improve privacy for everyone. He suggests that by becoming the example of what cybersecurity can look like, America, and the rest of the world, can be safer.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2017, review of Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance, and the Struggle to Reform the NSA.
Publishers Weekly, April 24, 2017, review of Beyond Snowden, p. 77.
ONLINE
Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/ (January 22, 2018), review of Beyond Snowden.
Brown University Website, https://www.bu.edu/ (January 22, 2018), author faculty profile.
Foreword Reviews, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (January 22, 2018), Bradley A. Scott, review of Beyond Snowden.*
Timothy Edgar
Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs
Biography
News
Events
BIOGRAPHY
Timothy H. Edgar is a former national security and intelligence official, cybersecurity expert, privacy lawyer and civil liberties activist. Edgar joined the American Civil Liberties Union shortly before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and spent five years fighting in Congress against abuses in the “war on terror.” He left the ACLU to try to make a difference by going inside America’s growing surveillance state – a story he tells in Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance and the Struggle to Reform the NSA.
In 2006, Edgar became the intelligence community’s first deputy for civil liberties, advising the director of national intelligence during the George W. Bush administration. In 2009, after President Barack Obama announced the creation of a new National Security Council position “specifically dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and civil liberties of the American people,” Edgar moved to the White House, where he advised Obama on privacy issues in cybersecurity policy.
In 2013, Edgar left government for Brown University to help launch its professional cybersecurity degree program, and is now a senior fellow at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Edgar also works to help companies navigate cybersecurity problems, and is on the advisory board of Virtru, which offers simple encryption software for businesses and individuals.
Edgar has been profiled by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and Wired, and he is a contributing editor to “Lawfare: Hard National Security Choices.” Edgar was a law clerk to Judge Sandra Lynch, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Dartmouth College.
Timothy H. Edgar
Timothy H. Edgar is author of the book, Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance, and the Struggle to Reform the NSA. He also serves as the academic director for law and policy in Brown University's Executive Master in Cybersecurity program and a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Timothy Edgar
Timothy H. Edgar defended privacy as an ACLU lawyer before going inside America’s growing surveillance state as an intelligence official in both the Bush and Obama administrations – a story he tells in Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance and the Struggle to Reform the NSA. In 2013, Edgar left government to become a Senior Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute and helped put together Brown’s Executive Master in Cybersecurity. Edgar also serves on the advisory board of Virtru, an encryption software company. Edgar’s work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and Wired. Edgar is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Dartmouth College.
Timothy Edgar
Contributor
Biography:
Timothy H. Edgar is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies and Public Affairs at Brown University. He was the first-ever director of privacy and civil liberties for the White House National Security Staff during President Obama’s first term, focusing on cyber security, open government, surveillance, and data privacy. He is a contributing editor to Lawfare. Under George W. Bush, Edgar was the first deputy for civil liberties for the director of national intelligence, from 2006 to 2009, and the national security counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, from 2001 to 2006. Edgar clerked for Judge Sandra Lynch, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Dartmouth College.
Timothy H. Edgar
International and Public Affairs, Brown University
EMAIL
timothy_edgar@brown.edu
PHONE
(401) 863-9768
Visiting Fellow, International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Timothy H. Edgar is a visiting fellow at the Institute and adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. His work focuses on the unique policy challenges posed by growing global cyber conflict, particularly in reconciling security interests with fundamental values, including privacy and Internet freedom. He served under President Obama as the first director of privacy and civil liberties for the White House National Security Staff, focusing on cybersecurity, open government, and data privacy initiatives. From 2006 to 2009, he was the first deputy for civil liberties for the director of national intelligence, reviewing new surveillance authorities, the terrorist watchlist, and other sensitive programs. He has also been counsel for the information sharing environment, which facilitates the secure sharing of terrorism-related information. Prior to his government service, Mr. Edgar was the national security and immigration counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, where he spearheaded the organization’s innovative left- right coalition advocating for safeguards for a number of post-9/11 counterterrorism initiatives, including the USA Patriot Act. He frequently testified before Congress and appeared in major television, radio, and print media.
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Print Marked Items
Edgar, Timothy H.: BEYOND
SNOWDEN
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Edgar, Timothy H. BEYOND SNOWDEN Brookings Institution Press (Adult Nonfiction)
$21.99 8, 29 ISBN: 978-0-8157-3063-7
A former civil rights lawyer considers changing attitudes regarding personal privacy within the
National Security Agency following the disclosures by Edward Snowden.Formerly a lawyer for
the American Civil Liberties Union and then a civil liberties protection officer for the Director of
National Intelligence and the Obama White House, Edgar (International and Public
Affairs/Brown Univ.) is well-versed in, and sympathetic to, the concerns of both civil liberties
advocates and the national security establishment. In this debut, he argues that while their
interests will always be in tension, both groups share fundamentally similar values, and NSA
personnel try hard to respect legal limitations regarding the privacy rights of Americans
(foreigners, not so much). However, these limitations have recently shifted in confusing ways,
and their interpretations take time to understand and implement. Edgar suggests that a major
problem in managing intelligence collection is that only the NSA really understands what it is
doing, and hardly anyone in Congress, the courts, or the administration is adequately informed
about its top-secret activities and interested in, or even capable of, providing suitable monitoring
and correction. Another is that the laws governing privacy protections were written for an analog
world and cannot be effectively applied in the digital era where concepts like the location of data
are increasingly meaningless. The author includes a dozen specific recommendations for legal,
procedural, and technical changes to our approach to electronic surveillance. While his basic
themes are clear, Edgar's argument can be difficult to follow. This is in part because the topic is a
highly technical one, and government secrecy prevents the author from enlivening his points
with concrete examples. Readers may struggle to keep straight the shifting state of the law or to
understand why the changes are significant and where they lead. In this, reader confusion and
frustration perhaps mirror those of NSA workers themselves. A perceptive but discouraging
analysis of the current state of government electronic surveillance.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
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"Edgar, Timothy H.: BEYOND SNOWDEN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495427442/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fd2a273c. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495427442
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Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass
Surveiliance, and the Struggle to
Reform the NSA
Publishers Weekly.
264.17 (Apr. 24, 2017): p77.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveiliance, and the Struggle to Reform the NSA
Timothy H. Edgar. Brookings Institution, $21.99 (222p) ISBN 978-0-8157-3063-7
Edgar, a former ACLU lawyer who left that group in 2006 to advise the director of national
intelligence on safeguarding civil liberties and privacy, has the appropriate background to
provide this deep dive into the recent history of the American intelligence community's adoption
of mass-surveillance techniques and the ensuing efforts to balance security and freedom. While
the general public is familiar with the contours of the issues and the revelations that Edward
Snowden provided, Edgar provides an insider's perspective on the government's internal debates.
For example, after Snowden revealed the existence of the NSA's collection of Internet
communications, there were serious discussions about changing how the FISA court functions to
include a privacy advocate as a check on government overreach. But Edgar, who left the Obama
administration in 2013, concedes that the election of Donald Trump has left the future of such
discussions in limbo, with even government officials who had pushed for "stronger surveillance
powers" concerned about the potential for their abuse. Despite the seriousness of the issues
raised, Edgar is forced to concede that his ultimate conclusion--that "there is or at least ought to
be common call" among "both intelligence officials and civil libertarians" for a "future that
reconciles the need for surveillance programs with respect for internet freedom, privacy and
human rights"--is precatory, rather than descriptive. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveiliance, and the Struggle to Reform the NSA."
Publishers Weekly, 24 Apr. 2017, p. 77. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491250845/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b7795031. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491250845
BOOK
Beyond Snowden
Privacy, Mass Surveillance, and the Struggle to Reform the NSA
By Timothy H. EdgarAugust 29, 2017
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LOOK INSIDE
Contents
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9780815730637
Safeguarding Our Privacy and Our Values in an Age of Mass Surveillance
America’s mass surveillance programs, once secret, can no longer be ignored. While Edward Snowden began the process in 2013 with his leaks of top secret documents, the Obama administration’s own reforms have also helped bring the National Security Agency and its programs of signals intelligence collection out of the shadows. The real question is: What should we do about mass surveillance?
Timothy Edgar, a long-time civil liberties activist who worked inside the intelligence community for six years during the Bush and Obama administrations, believes that the NSA’s programs are profound threat to the privacy of everyone in the world. At the same time, he argues that mass surveillance programs can be made consistent with democratic values, if we make the hard choices needed to bring transparency, accountability, privacy, and human rights protections into complex programs of intelligence collection. Although the NSA and other agencies already comply with rules intended to prevent them from spying on Americans, Edgar argues that the rules—most of which date from the 1970s—are inadequate for this century. Reforms adopted during the Obama administration are a good first step but, in his view, do not go nearly far enough.
Edgar argues that our communications today—and the national security threats we face—are both global and digital. In the twenty first century, the only way to protect our privacy as Americans is to do a better job of protecting everyone’s privacy. Beyond Snowden explains both why and how we can do this, without sacrificing the vital intelligence capabilities we need to keep ourselves and our allies safe. If we do, we set a positive example for other nations that must confront challenges like terrorism while preserving human rights. The United States already leads the world in mass surveillance. It can lead the world in mass surveillance reform.
BOOK DETAILS
272 Pages
Brookings Institution Press, August 29, 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 9780815730637
Ebook ISBN: 9780815730644
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Timothy H. Edgar defended privacy after 9/11 as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union before going inside America’s growing surveillance state as the deputy for civil liberties in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – a story he tells in Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance and the Struggle to Reform the NSA. Edgar then moved to the White House to advise the National Security Council on cybersecurity policy, in a job that President Barack Obama announced in 2009 that was “specifically dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and civil liberties of the American people.”
In 2013, Edgar left government for Brown University, where he is a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Edgar helped put together Brown’s Executive Master in Cybersecurity and is on the advisory board of Virtru, an encryption software company. Edgar is a contributing editor to Lawfare and his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and Wired. Edgar is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Dartmouth College.
BEYOND SNOWDEN
PRIVACY, MASS SURVEILLANCE, AND THE STRUGGLE TO REFORM THE NSA
Timothy H. Edgar
Brookings Institution Press (Aug 29, 2017)
Hardcover $21.99 (166pp)
978-0-8157-3063-7
This is an important book from a uniquely informed source on a critical and timely topic.
Beyond Snowden, written by Timothy H. Edgar, a civil liberties lawyer who had a ringside view of development of government surveillance programs, provides a deeply detailed insider’s account of how they came into existence, the controversies that have surrounded them, and the ways that legislators, presidents, activists, technologists, and the intelligence community have tried to balance the legitimate needs of public safety against the fear that such spying powers will be misused.
When former CIA and NSA worker Edward Snowden leaked a collection of classified documents in 2013, revealing US government electronic surveillance programs, the controversy spotlighted civil libertarians’ grave concerns about threat to privacy. Edgar is uniquely qualified to tell this story. From 2001 to 2006, he opposed the Patriot Act and other efforts to legitimize widespread surveillance. Edgar gained an insider’s perspective of both the actual reach of the NSA’s surveillance capabilities and the rules that limit that power.
Although Beyond Snowden is modest in length, it is dense with detail and unavoidably complex legal reasoning, particularly in discussing the distinction between NSA treatment of foreign and American communications. Edgar has documented his sources carefully and does his best to present a complicated subject in a clear and succinct manner.
As its title suggests, Beyond Snowden does not focus on the details of Snowden’s actions but on what lies beyond them in the past, present, and future. Edgar argues that Snowden performed a useful service by forcing the government to acknowledge the need for reform and oversight of the NSA’s surveillance capabilities.
He offers his own set of recommendations, concluding with a plea that “those who work in national security agencies must hold strong to American values.” Existing rules and the professionalism of the United States intelligence community offer some protection for privacy, but “they are not tyrant-proof,” he says, especially under a president who “traffics in dangerous conspiracy theories” and repeatedly expresses disregard for constitutional rights.
This is an important book from a uniquely informed source on a critical and timely topic. It deserves widespread attention.
Reviewed by Bradley A. Scott
July/August 2017