This is a fascinating story. Lawyers for an Islamic charity, alleged by the US government to be funding al Qaeda, is suing the Bush Administration for illegally spying on them under the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. Other cases like this have been thrown out of court, but this one has a greater chance. Why? Because, through a government flub, they have actual hard evidence that the NSA spied on them without warrants:

Unlike dozens of other lawyers who have sued alleging similar violations of civil liberties stemming from the Bush administration’s secret terrorism surveillance program, Eisenberg’s team had what it claimed to be unequivocal proof: the Document.

In 2004, as the Treasury Department was considering whether to include the group on its list of terrorist organizations, Al-Haramain’s Washington lawyer, Lynne Bernabei, asked to see the evidence.

That’s when, in a case of bureaucratic bungling, Treasury officials mistakenly handed over the call log _ which has the words “top secret” stamped on every page _ along with press clippings and other unclassified documents deemed relevant to the case.

Six weeks later, the FBI was dispatched to Bernabei’s office to retrieve it. But by then she had passed out copies to five other lawyers, a Washington Post reporter and two Al-Haramain directors _ al-Buthi and Pirouz Sedaghaty, also known as Pete Seda.

What is now colloquially known as “The Document” and related notes were later confiscated, but the judge has allowed the suit to go forward from memory. “The biggest obstacle this litigation has faced is the problem showing someone was actually subjected to surveillance,” explains one law professor. But this suit “has a very good chance to proceed farther than the other cases because it’s impossible for the government to erase (the lawyers’) memories of the document.”