Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., filed a class action lawsuit Wednesday...
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., filed a class action lawsuit Wednesday seeking an end to the NSA’s phone surveillance practices. He filed his complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on behalf of himself and FreedomWorks and…
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naming President Barack Obama, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Keith Alexander and FBI Director James Comey as defendants in the complaint (http://bit.ly/NCOOYF). He asked for “declaratory and injunctive relief” on the surveillance, asking the court to find the practices unconstitutional -- violating the Fourth Amendment search and seizure prohibitions -- and to prevent the government from continuing the practices. The complaint questions the effectiveness of the surveillance and judged the bulk collection of phone metadata to be revealing. The government would have to purge all its stored metadata, if Paul’s requests were granted. Paul’s lead counsel is Ken Cuccinelli, former Republican attorney general of Virginia. Paul held a courthouse press conference with Cuccinelli and FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe on Wednesday. “I expect this case to go all the way to the Supreme Court and I predict the American people will win,” Paul said in a statement (http://bit.ly/1kCutjz). The three wrote a joint op-ed for CNN this week (http://cnn.it/1ntUVsA). More than 5,500 people had signed on to an Internet petition supporting the lawsuit as of Wednesday afternoon, according to a FreedomWorks website (http://bit.ly/1dkIiiD).