The case stems from a 2011 class action lawsuit filed against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) related to one of its surveillance operations.

[2][3] Monteilh was convicted of grand theft in connection with the distribution of steroids in a separate matter in 2008, and ended up in California state prison.

[5] Eric Holder, the Attorney General at the time (under the Obama administration), helped defend the FBI's actions leading up to Fazaga.

[2] U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney agreed, stating that the FBI could not defend itself without "relying on privileged material",[2] and in August 2012, dismissed the class-action suit.

The Ninth Circuit found that the District Court erred in application of FISA's state secret privilege outlined in Section 1806(f), as the conditions of the three members of ICOI met the requirements of Section 1806(f): that they were an "aggrieved person" that had sought to "discover or obtain" the information the FBI had obtained on them.

[12] The FBI filed a petition for a writ of certiorari that asked the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit's ruling and resolve the question regarding FISA Section 1806(f).

[15] In an opinion piece in 2014 for Al Jazeera, assistant professor of history Abdullah Al-Arian at Georgetown University criticized the use of informants in Fazaga.