The advancement of a lawsuit against the psychologists responsible for the CIA torture program may indicate US courts are ready to finally check government power on national security issues, former National Security Agency (NSA) technical director and whistleblower William Binney told Sputnik.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — On Monday, a US federal court struck down a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against two psychologists who designed and implemented the CIA torture program. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the lawsuit has now cleared the final legal hurdle before a scheduled trial, which would be the first for a case involving CIA torture.

"Hopefully the courts will not be afraid to address all the crimes our government has been committing," Binney said. "The courts have failed to address their obligations to check the federal government when it comes to national security."

The judge’s ruling opens up the prospects of victims suing their CIA torturers and implies the courts are "finally starting to fulfill their duty under the [US] Constitution," Binney added.

Binney said that up to now, the US courts and legal system had avoided confronting the government and taking any action to challenge or expose any of its illegal and secret activities.

CIA-contracted psychologists James Mitchel and John "Bruce" Jessen devised the methods and helped convince the CIA to torture prisoners, making $81 million in the process, according to the ACLU.

The torture methods used on Salim Soud and Rahman included slamming them into walls, stuffing them into coffin-like boxes, exposing them to extreme temperatures, starving them, inflicting various kinds of water torture, and chaining them in stress positions designed to inflict pain and keep them awake for days on end, the ACLU said.

In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee released an executive summary of a more than 6,000 page report concluding that CIA detainees were tortured under a program enacted between 2001 and 2007, at the early stages of the US War on Terror.