The SCOTUS has refused to hear the case of German citizen Khaled el-Masri, who was kidnapped by the US and imprisoned secretly in Afghanistan for four months in a case of mistaken identity. In refusing to hear the case, the Supremes have accepted the Administration’s exercise of the state secrets privilege, which essentially means they can do whatever they want and quash the resulting courtroom challenges on the grounds that “hey, we gotta keep secrets.”

At the height of Cold War tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union, U.S. presidents used the state secrets privilege six times from 1953 to 1976, according to OpenTheGovernment.org. Since 2001, it has been used 39 times, enabling the government to unilaterally withhold documents from the court system, the group said.

Thirteen CIA agents have arrest warrants in Germany as a result of the case.