along with that of Hossain, was denied by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on July 2, 2008. A petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court was denied on March 9, 2009. As reported on the front page of The New York Times on August 26, 2007, the Aref appeal could have been an important test case for the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, as it appeared to be the only criminal case where there was strong evidence that the program was used to target a defendant Both the ACLU and the NYCLU got involved in the case. However, in its opinion, the Second Circuit held that Aref had no right to know about this because it was classified. In an accompanying summary order, the court also sidestepped the issue by claiming that Aref hadn't shown a “colorable basis” for asserted he had been wiretapped under the NSA program. In July, 2009, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice published a report saying that DOJ should re-examine criminal cases to see if exculpatory evidence had been unfairly kept from the defense due to the evidence having been classified. Nothing ever came of that. On April 5, 2010, the Albany, NY Common Council passed a resolution asking DOJ to act on the Inspector General's Report and re-examine the Aref case as well as others. That never occurred. Background on the wiretapping issue in the case In December 2005, The New York Times revealed that President Bush had taken the controversial step of secretly authorizing the NSA to expand its surveillance to within the US. A month later another NYT article quoted government officials as saying that the NSA program led them to Aref. On January 20, 2006, Aref's lawyers filed a motion challenging the case against Aref as tainted by the illegality of the NSA program–the motion stated, The government engaged in illegal electronic surveillance of thousands of US persons, including Yassin Aref, then instigated a sting operation to attempt to entrap Mr. Aref into supporting a non-existent terrorist plot, then dared to claim that the illegal NSA operation was justified because it was the only way to catch Mr. Aref! On March 10, 2006, the government filed a response to the defense motion which was completely classified, something defense attorneys and the NYLCU said was virtually unheard of and a violation of the 6th Amendment right to confront