Government Internet Surveillance in Chicago Bomb-Plot Case Can Remain Secret, Judge Rules
By Ryan Gallagher
Posted Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013, at 5:55 PM
... Adel Daoud is accused of attempting to detonate what he believed was a car bomb in Chicago after being identified as a possible terrorist through his emails and other online activity. According to an FBI affidavit filed in the case, two undercover FBI agents reached out to 19-year-old Daoud after he was observed researching violent jihad and viewing the English-language al-Qaida propaganda magazine Inspire. The undercover feds pretended to be considering waging jihad and set up a face-to-face meeting with Daoud in an Illinois park in July 2012. According to the affidavit, Daoud expressed a desire to kill hundreds of Americans in retaliation for a perceived U.S. war against Islam and Muslims. He allegedly came up with a plot to bomb a bar in downtown Chicago and was provided with fake explosives constructed by FBI bomb technicians. In September 2012, he attempted to detonate the device outside the Chicago bar and was taken immediately into custody.
However, a crucial and highly pertinent part of Daoud’s case involves how he initially popped up on the feds’ radar. According to the FBI, the teen was first noticed in October 2011 after he used an email account to obtain and distribute material related to violent jihad. It is not mentioned by the FBI in the court documents how those emails were first flagged. But last year, when a controversial 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was up for renewal, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., used Daoud’s case as an example of how the law had been crucial in thwarting potential domestic terror plots.
Feinstein’s statement, plus recently leaked documents about NSA surveillance, prompted Daoud’s attorney to seek disclosure of details related to how the investigation into him first began. The defense team had hoped to obtain the information to challenge the constitutionality of subsequent evidence. But on Wednesday, federal Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman denied a request to order prosecutors to disclose details about the surveillance. The government had argued that it should not have to disclose the details because it did not intend to use information gleaned from the surveillance at trial ...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/29/adel_daoud_chicago_bombing_case_judge_says_prosecutors_don_t_have_to_release.html
