Republican Senator Sues Obama for NSA Affair

The politician Rand Paul has filed a class action suit against the U.S. president. The senator wants to prevent tapping of U.S. telephone data.

The U.S. Republican Rand Paul is suing the government for spying on its own citizens with the National Security Agency’s help. Paul is acting in the name “of everyone in America that has a phone,” he said in Washington.

The senator and a group that is supported by the extremely conservative tea party movement said that with their claim against U.S. President Obama they were representing over 380,000 people, who all have an interest in protecting their data. The aim of the lawsuit is to put an end to the NSA collecting so-called metadata from telephone conversations. Collecting American citizens’ calling data is a violation of the American constitution and needs to be stopped straight away.

“There’s a huge and growing swell of protest in this country of people who are enraged that their records would be taken without suspicion, without a judge’s warrant and without individualization,” said Paul. In his press conference he ostentatiously held a phone in each hand. The senator is considered to be a libertarian who is a potential Republican candidate for the 2016 presidential elections. He is closely affiliated to the tea party.

The information was leaked by the former intelligence community employee Edward Snowden [stated] that the NSA actually records so-called metadata of telephone conversations, which include the telephone numbers and the length of conversations. Obama had already urged for this practice of data collection to change.