SAN FRANCISCO — In 2005, Rahinah Ibrahim, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, was handcuffed, detained and interrogated for two hours at San Francisco International Airport, after being told she was on a U.S. government watchlist.

Today, eight years later, the 48-year-old Malaysian academic and mother of four became the first person to take the U.S. to trial after being included in America’s database of suspected terrorists. At issue: whether someone wrongly watchlisted has a right to formally clear their name in court — and whether the government even has to admit that it placed someone on the list to begin with.

The first-of-its-kind trial could have serious implications for the government’s vast secret watchlist system, which contains 875,000 names, according to the most recent figures released this year by the U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center.