Today's New York Times addresses how complicated civil lawsuits are becoming regarding the domestic surveillance program.

The Bush administration has employed extraordinary secrecy in defending the National Security Agency’s highly classified domestic surveillance program from civil lawsuits. Plaintiffs and judges’ clerks cannot see its secret filings. Judges have to make appointments to review them and are not allowed to keep copies. Judges have even been instructed to use computers provided by the Justice Department to compose their decisions.

The first appeal of the program will be heard next week, and lawyers suing the government say the procedures described above threaten the separation of powers and the lawyer-client privilege. While the government claims such measures are needed with highly classified materials. However the government now considers these cases moot since last week's announcement that the government is now conducting the wiretaps under the authority of a secret intelligence court.

Even if this is so, one case can not be thrown out for these reasons. The New York Times article discusses the interesting circumstances in the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation case in Oregon. "Soon after one suit challenging the program was filed last year in Oregon, Justice Department lawyers threatened to seize an exhibit from the court file. This month, in the same case, the department sought to inspect and delete files from the computers on which lawyers for the plaintiffs had prepared their legal filings."

The ACLU has released the report, No Real Threat: The Pentagon’s Secret Database on Peaceful Protest, covering the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notices (TALON) database found to have recorded information about the activities of peaceful, anti-war organizations. The report reviews the documents the ACLU obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit last year. The ACLU is calling for Congress to hold oversight hearings to investigate the material obtained in the database. The press release quotes Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office; "Americans must once again be confident we can exercise our constitutionally protected right to protest without becoming the subject of a secret government file."

Read the story in today's Washington Post.