"Justice Department attorneys attempted to persuade three federal appeals court judges Wednesday to dismiss two major lawsuits challenging the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program," reports The Los Angeles Times. According to the report, "The government is attempting to have all the cases dismissed under the "state secrets" privilege, established by the Supreme Court in 1953, that bars presentation in court of evidence that could threaten national security."

The Washington Post reports, "The Bush administration has approved a plan to expand domestic access to some of the most powerful tools of 21st-century spycraft, giving law enforcement officials and others the ability to view data obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors that can see through cloud cover and even penetrate buildings and underground bunkers." According to the report, "A program approved by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security will allow broader domestic use of secret overhead imagery beginning as early as this fall, with the expectation that state and local law enforcement officials will eventually be able to tap into technology once largely restricted to foreign surveillance."

"In 2003," reports The Washington Post, "Room 641A of a large telecommunications building in downtown San Francisco was filled with powerful data-mining equipment for a 'special job' by the National Security Agency," where copies of e-mails and other online traffic was siphoned from one of the largest Internet hubs in the United States. As the report explains, "What occurred in the room is now at the center of a pivotal legal battle in a federal appeals court over the Bush administration's controversial spying program, including the monitoring that came to be publicly known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program."