ACLU Sues U.S. Government Over Phone Records ‘Dragnet’
This article is for subscribers only.
The U.S. government violated the privacy and free speech of civilians with its “dragnet acquisition” of phone records under a National Security Agency program, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a lawsuit.
The complaint is one of the first to take aim at a program, administered under the anti-terror Patriot Act, to collect the telephone records of all Verizon Communications Inc. customers and turn them over to the NSA. After news organizations disclosed the program, the Obama administration confirmed last week that a secret court had approved the collection.