# Classified Information Procedures Act > [!note] Stub > This is a short entry that hasn't been fully written yet. Public Law 96-456, signed **15 October 1980**, 94 Stat. 2025 — the statute that governs how classified information is handled in a federal criminal case. It has never been folded into the body of title 18 of the United States Code; it sits in that title's appendix and is cited section by section, which is why references to it look like "§ 4" or "§ 6(e)" rather than a five-digit code number. Congress wrote it to answer *graymail* — the tactic of demanding classified material loosely connected to the charge so that the government must choose between protecting the secret and bringing the case. The Act's method is to move every such fight to the front of the case, where a judge rules on it before a jury is seated. Courts have repeatedly held that it created **procedures and not privileges**: it added no new ground for withholding anything and no new right to obtain anything. Sixteen sections. The load-bearing ones are § 4 (deletions and substitutions in discovery), § 5 (the defendant's notice of what he intends to use), § 6 (the hearing, the substitution, and the override at § 6(e)), § 7 (an interlocutory appeal available only to the government) and § 9 (the security rules for the courts, prescribed by the Chief Justice). Amended five times between 1988 and 2006, most substantially by the addition of § 9A in 2000. The procedure stage by stage is mapped in [[How Classified Evidence Reaches a Criminal Trial]]. ## See also - [[How Classified Evidence Reaches a Criminal Trial]] · [[Graymail]] · [[Classified Information Security Officer]] - [[United States v. Fernandez]] · [[United States v. Yunis]] · [[Espionage Act of 1917]] - [[How Information Is Classified and Declassified]] · [[How a Security Clearance Is Granted and Revoked]] - [[How a Federal Prosecution Begins and Ends]] · [[Judiciary Hub]]