14 DAY TRIAL // Senator Rand Paul has filed a class action against Barack Obama, the president of the United States. The legal effort seeks to put a stop to NSA’s mass surveillance practices.
The announcement was made during a press conference, where Paul was joined by Ken Cuccinelli, former attorney general in Virginia, and Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks.
“There’s a huge and growing swell of protest in this country of people who are outraged that their records are being taken without suspicion, without a judge’s warrant, and without individualization,” Paul said.
He later explained that he was not against the NSA or against spying for that matter, or looking at phone records. But if the intelligence agency wants to look at anyone in particular, it should have to get a warrant from a judge, in accordance with the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.
Paul has been talking about this lawsuit for months. The first time he mentioned his desire to launch a class action against the White House was back in June, within the first week after the NSA scandal began.
It took him a while to put everything together, but it looks like the case is finally going to reach a judge’s table.
“Today we ask the question for every phone user in America: can a single warrant allow the government to collect all your records, all the time? I don’t think so,” said Paul in a statement.
The list of people Paul is suing includes not only Obama, but also James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, and James Comey, director of the FBI.
The phone data collection program has gotten a lot of attention in the United States and it has been the only one Obama referred to in the list of reforms announced a few weeks ago. Of course, the reforms don’t really change much – the NSA would no longer be the entity collecting the data, although a third-party company will do so, and the NSA is to finally be required to get a warrant to view the data.
The catch is that the warrant would be given by the FISA court, a panel that hasn’t said “no” to the NSA in years.