This undated photo provided by the U.S. Marshal's office shows Adel Daoud, of Hillside, Ill. Daoud is charged with terrorism for allegedly trying to set off what he thought was a car bomb Sept. 14, 2012, near a downtown Chicago bar. (AP/AP) 
 
 Four days before a sweeping government surveillance law was set to expire last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the chamber’s Intelligence Committee, took to the Senate floor. She touted the law’s value by listing some of the terrorist attacks it had helped thwart, including “a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar” that fall. 
 
 “So I believe the FISA Amendments Act is important,” the California Democrat said before a vote to extend the 2008 law, “and these cases show the program has worked.” 
 
 Today, however, the government is refusing to say whether that law was used to develop evidence to charge Adel Daoud, a 19-year-old Chicago man accused of the bomb plot. 
 
 And Daoud’s lawyers said in a motion filed Friday that the reason is simple. The government, they said, wants to avoid a constitutional challenge to the law, which governs a National Security Agency surveillance program that has once again become the focus of national debate over its reach into Americans’ private communications. 
 
 “Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly,” lawyers Thomas Durkin and Joshua Herman wrote in their motion. “When a criminal defendant’s constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of State Secrets.” 
 
 If the government acknowledged that it had used evidence derived from the FISA Amendments Act, Daoud would have standing to challenge the law’s constitutionality. Specifically, Daoud’s lawyers would be able to take on a provision known as Section 702. The law permits the interception of foreign targets’ ­e-mails and phone calls without an individual warrant, including when the foreigners are in communication with Americans or legal residents. 
 
 The U.S. Supreme Court in February rejected a constitutional challenge to Section 702 by a group of journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates, saying they had no standing to sue because they had not proved that their communications had been intercepted. 
 
 But the court also said that if the government intends to use information derived from the Section 702 surveillance in a prosecution “it must provide advance notice of its intent,” and a defendant may challenge the lawfulness of the surveillance. The government assured the court that it would give such notice to criminal defendants. 
 
 In a filing this month in Chicago, U.S. Attorney Gary S. Shapiro refused to say whether the evidence was obtained under Section 702. Instead, he said, the government told Daoud the evidence was acquired pursuant to a traditional FISA court order, rather than under the expanded surveillance program authorized in 2008. A traditional order requires the government to go to a FISA judge and show probable cause that the target is an agent of a foreign power. 
 
 Daoud’s attorneys say in their pleading that the government is being disingenuous. “We believe it is clear that the evidence . . . came from Section 702,” Durkin said in an interview. “Either Senator Feinstein’s information was correct in December 2012, or she was given wrong information. The government has never disputed what she said.” 
 
 A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office had no comment but noted that the office had replied to Daoud’s initial request for notice earlier this month in Shapiro’s filing. 
 
 “The most troubling part of the case is the government seems to be trying to hide the ball,” said Alex Abdo, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued the Supreme Court case on behalf of the journalists, lawyers and activists. “They told the Supreme Court not to worry about reviewing the FISA Amendments Act because it would get reviewed in a criminal case. They said if they used the evidence in a criminal case, they’d give notice. Now they’re telling criminal defendants they don’t have to tell them. It’s a game of three-card monte with the privacy rights of millions of Americans.” 
 
 Abdo said the original FISA statute, passed in 1978, requires the government to notify defendants when evidence being used against them is derived from surveillance authorized by the law. The court, he said, should require the government to abide by the law. “Otherwise,” he said, “the most sweeping surveillance program ever enacted by Congress will never be reviewed in public by a court.” 
 
 Similarly, Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at American University, said, “Everyone knows the role that Section 702 is playing in a case like this.” But, he said, “thanks in part to the Supreme Court, the government can use Section 702 and then never have to defend its constitutionality.” 
 
 The central problem with Section 702, critics say, is its breadth and lack of individual warrants. The law targets non-U.S. persons “reasonably believed” to be located outside the United States but does not require that the government obtain a warrant before intercepting communications. 
 
 Moreover, the purpose of the collection is “foreign intelligence,” a broad category that may include everything from information on terrorism to nuclear proliferation to what a European journalist is writing on human rights abuses or an African businessman is saying about global financial risk, experts say. 
 
 According to a criminal complaint filed by an FBI agent, Daoud received an e-mail in February 2012 regarding his registration with an online jihadi forum overseas. In May 2012, Daoud sent himself a link for nine issues of Inspire magazine, an online publication put out by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an al-Qaeda affiliate. 
 
 That same month, two FBI undercover employees posing as jihadists contacted Daoud online in response to material he had posted. Between July and September, an undercover FBI agent met Daoud in Chicago and helped him plan the attack. 
 
 Daoud was arrested in September after he attempted to detonate a bomb placed in a jeep outside a Chicago bar with a remote-triggering device. 
 
 Durkin said that he thought the FBI used surveillance powers under Section 702 to identify Daoud and then got a traditional FISA order to conduct its sting against him. 
 
 “Nonetheless,” he said in the motion Friday, “the government’s interest in confusing these two issues is obvious. If it can avoid giving proper notice to defendants, as it seeks to do here, the government can avoid a challenge to the [FISA Amendments Act] altogether.” 
 
 U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman has set a trial date for February. ||||| Lawyers in Chicago terror case question what sparked investigation 
 
 Attorneys for Adel Daoud wrote that prosecutors are purposely hiding information to avoid a possible battle over the constitutionality of the secret spying program, which was authorized by Congress in 2008 under an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 
 
 Lawyers for a west suburban teenager charged with plotting to set off a bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar accused prosecutors Friday of dodging questions about whether the investigation was sparked by a massive government surveillance program. 
 
 From left, Defense attorney Thomas Durkin and father of the defendant Adel Daoud, speak with members of the press before attending a hearing for Daoud at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on Sept. 17, 2012. (Armando L. Sanchez ) 
 
 Daoud's attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, said he is asking only for a yes or no on whether evidence in his case was derived from the expanded law, not for the highly classified content or details of the searches. 
 
 Prosecutors wrote in an earlier filing that they have no obligation to disclose the information unless ordered by the judge presiding over Daoud's case. 
 
 The surveillance programs — including one that collects U.S. phone records and another that tracks Internet use by foreigners with possible links to terrorism — were exposed earlier this month by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked details to news organizations. 
 
 In the ensuing uproar, government officials have defended the programs as a highly effective weapon against terrorism. Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee earlier this week, an FBI official said Internet surveillance was pivotal in the arrest of Najibullah Zazi in 2009 for plotting to bomb a New York subway. 
 
 The filing by Daoud's attorney scolded the government for trying to have it both ways. 
 
 "Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly," Durkin wrote. "When a criminal defendant's constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of state secrets." 
 
 Daoud, 19, of Hillside, came under FBI scrutiny after posting messages online about killing Americans, authorities have said. FBI analysts posing as terrorists exchanged messages with him and ultimately helped him plan an attack. Daoud was arrested in September after being accused of trying to detonate what he thought was a powerful car bomb outside a bar in the Loop. 
 
 Daoud, who has pleaded not guilty, is set to go on trial in February in federal court in Chicago. 
 
 jmeisner@tribune.com ||||| The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand for user data that the company believed was unconstitutional, according to court documents unsealed Thursday. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) 
 
 The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand to hand over user communications — a request the company believed was unconstitutional — according to court documents unsealed Thursday that illuminate how federal officials forced American tech companies to participate in the National Security Agency’s controversial PRISM program. 
 
 The documents, roughly 1,500 pages worth, outline a secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by Yahoo to resist the government’s demands. The company’s loss required Yahoo to become one of the first to begin providing information to PRISM, a program that gave the NSA extensive access to records of online com­munications by users of Yahoo and other U.S.-based technology firms. 
 
 The ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review became a key moment in the development of PRISM, helping government officials to convince other Silicon Valley companies that unprecedented data demands had been tested in the courts and found constitutionally sound. Eventually, most major U.S. tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple and AOL, complied. Microsoft had joined earlier, before the ruling, NSA documents have shown. 
 
 A version of the court ruling had been released in 2009 but was so heavily redacted that observers were unable to discern which company was involved, what the stakes were and how the court had wrestled with many of the issues involved. 
 
 “We already knew that this was a very, very important decision by the FISA Court of Review, but we could only guess at why,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University. 
 
 The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand for user data that the company believed was unconstitutional, according to court documents unsealed Thursday. (Reuters) 
 
 PRISM was first revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last year, prompting intense backlash and a wrenching national debate over allegations of overreach in government surveillance. 
 
 Documents made it clear that the program allowed the NSA to order U.S.-based tech companies to turn over e-mails and other communications to or from foreign targets without search warrants for each of those targets. Other NSA programs gave even more wide-ranging access to ­personal information of people worldwide, by collecting data directly from fiber-optic connections. 
 
 In the aftermath of the revelations, the companies have struggled to defend themselves against accusations that they were willing participants in government surveillance programs — an allegation that has been particularly damaging to the reputations of these companies overseas, including in lucrative markets in Europe. 
 
 Yahoo, which endured heavy criticism after The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper used Snowden’s documents to reveal the existence of PRISM last year, was legally bound from revealing its efforts in attempting to resist government pressure. The New York Times first reported Yahoo’s role in the case in June 2013, a week after the initial PRISM revelations. 
 
 Both the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, an appellate court, ordered declassification of the case last year, amid a broad effort to make public the legal reasoning behind NSA programs that had stirred national and international anger. Judge William C. Bryson, presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, ordered the documents from the legal battle unsealed Thursday. Documents from the case in the lower court have not been released. 
 
 Yahoo hailed the decision in a Tumblr post Thursday afternoon. “The released documents underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the U.S. Government’s surveillance efforts,” Ron Bell, the company’s general counsel, wrote in the post. 
 
 The Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published their own Tumblr post Thursday evening offering a detailed description of the court proceedings and posting several related documents. It noted that both the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the appeals court sided with the government on the main questions at issue, and added that a subsequent law added more protections, making it “even more protective of the Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. persons than the statute upheld by the [appeals court] as constitutional.” 
 
 At issue in the original court case was a recently passed law, the Protect America Act of 2007, that allowed the government to collect data for significant foreign intelligence purposes on targets “reasonably believed” to be outside of the United States. Individual search warrants were not required for each target. That law has lapsed but became the foundation for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which created the legal authority for some of the NSA programs later revealed by Snowden. 
 
 The order requiring data from Yahoo came in 2007, soon after the Protect America Act passed. It set off alarms at the company because it sidestepped the traditional requirement that each target be subject to court review before surveillance could begin. The order also went beyond “metadata” — records of communications but not their actual content — to include the full e-mails. 
 
 A government filing from February 2008 described the order to Yahoo as including “certain types of communications while those communications are in transmission.” It also made clear that while this was intended to target people outside the United States, there inevitably would be “incidental collection” of the communications of Americans. The government promised “stringent minimization procedures to protect the privacy interests of United States persons.” 
 
 Rather than immediately comply with the sweeping order, Yahoo sued. 
 
 Central to the case was whether the Protect America Act overstepped constitutional bounds, particularly the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant. An early Yahoo filing said the case was “of tremendous national importance. The issues at stake in this litigation are the most serious issues that this Nation faces today — to what extent must the privacy rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution yield to protect our national security.” 
 
 The appeals court, however, ruled that the government had put in place adequate safeguards to avoid constitutional violations. 
 
 “We caution that our decision does not constitute an endorsement of broad-based, indiscriminate executive power,” the court wrote on Aug. 22, 2008. “Rather, our decision recognizes that where the government has instituted several layers of serviceable safeguards to protect individuals against unwarranted harms and to minimize incidental intrusions, its efforts to protect national security should not be frustrated by the courts. This is such a case.” 
 
 The government threatened Yahoo with the $250,000-a-day fine after the company had lost an initial round before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court but was still pursuing an appeal. Faced with the fine, Yahoo began complying with the legal order as it continued with the appeal, which it lost several months later. 
 
 Stewart Baker, a former NSA general counsel and Bush administration Department of Homeland Security official, said it’s not unusual for courts to order compliance with rulings while appeals continue before higher courts. 
 
 “I’m always astonished how people are willing to abstract these decisions from the actual stakes,” Baker said. “We’re talking about trying to gather information about people who are trying to kill us and who will succeed if we don’t have robust information about their activities.” 
 
 The American Civil Liberties Union applauded Thursday’s move to release the documents but said it was long overdue. 
 
 “The public can’t understand what a law means if it doesn’t know how the courts are interpreting that law,” said Patrick Toomey, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. 
 
 Carol D. Leonnig and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
– Adel Daoud is a Chicago 19-year-old accused by the feds of trying to detonate a bomb outside a Chicago bar in 2012. His case, however, could serve as the first constitutional challenge to the government's sweeping surveillance techniques, reports the Washington Post. In a court filing yesterday, attorneys for the terror suspect demanded to know whether federal authorities used their expanded powers under a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to nab him. “Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly,” they wrote, as per the Chicago Tribune. "When a criminal defendant’s constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of State Secrets.” Federal prosecutors say they're not obligated to say whether they used the law, and a judge will have the final say, reports WLS-TV. So did they use it? Here's a hint: Last year, when the Senate was debating whether to renew the 2008 law—it's formally known as the FISA Amendments Act—Dianne Feinstein made her case in favor by asserting that it had helped stop "a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar." If the judge rules that the government must acknowledge it used the FAA, Daoud's attorney's would then be able to challenge its constitutionality.