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Sen. Rand Paul Planning Class Action Lawsuit Over Government Surveillance
By Sarah Pierce
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced on “Fox News Sunday” yesterday that he plans to file a class action lawsuit against the Obama Administration for its “unconstitutional” surveillance programs.
Paul called for a grass roots uprising of American citizens to challenge what he calls abusive government practices after it was revealed last week that the federal government has been gathering millions of phone and Internet records from leading companies as part of a secret anti-terrorism program, code-named PRISM.
“I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level,” Paul told “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies, ask your customers to join me in a class action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at then somebody will wake up and say things will change in Washington.”
Paul is also introducing a “4th Amendment Restoration Bill” that would limit government access to personal records without first obtaining a search warrant.
“I don’t think the American public knows the extent or knew the extent to which they were being surveyed and their data was being collected,” Paul said.
He pointed to recent public outcry over two proposed bills – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) – that opponents said would stifle freedom of speech. The outcry was so successful that the legislation was stopped in its tracks.
“If we can have that again — people by the millions coming out and saying, ‘Look, I want to be part of a class action suit that says to the government, let’s hear this at the Supreme Court level. Are you allowed to look at phone records even though there’s no probable cause that I’m related to a crime?’ — I think we’ll put an end to this,” Paul said.
His announcement comes several weeks after the Internal Revenue Service was hit with a class action lawsuit alleging it improperly seized more than 60 million personal medical records from 10 million Americans.
The unnamed California healthcare provider behind the class action lawsuit, filed on March 11, said IRS agents improperly seized the medical records — which included information on psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual and drug treatment, and other sensitive medical treatment data – without a search warrant or subpoena that authorized such a seizure.
According to the class action lawsuit, the IRS agents had a search warrant for the financial data of a former employee of the company, but the warrant “did not authorize any seizure of any healthcare or medical record of any persons, least of all third parties completely unrelated to the matter.”
“Despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant, defendants threatened to ‘rip’ the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over,” the class action lawsuit says.
“Moreover, even though defendants knew that the records they were seizing were not included within the scope of the search warrant, the defendants nonetheless searched and seized the records without making any attempt to segregate the files from those that could possibly be related to the search warrant. In fact, no effort was made at all to even try maintaining the illusion of legitimacy and legality.”
The IRS was hit with a second class action lawsuit a week later by a California Tea Party group that claims the tax agency unfairly and illegally singled out members for “intensive and intrusive scrutiny,” simply because they belonged to a group critical of how the country is being run.
Top Class Actions will update our readers on the progress of the government agency class action lawsuits – including the one Rand Paul is proposing – as they move their way through the court system.
Updated June 10th, 2013
All class action and lawsuit news updates are listed in the Lawsuit News section of Top Class Actions
3 thoughts onSen. Rand Paul Planning Class Action Lawsuit Over Government Surveillance
Allets, you’re either an idiot for not knowing what the Obama Administration is doing or you’re completely out of touch with reality. Anyone with the common knowledge that Obama is bringing in to play what he likes to call The New World Order. You might want to read what that is all about. I’m behind this class action suit. The government is going way above what the law allows.
when will the forms be ready? will it be done online or by mail?
The guy is a douche bag!