A Republican Senator says he will take legal action against President Obama for \"snooping on the American people,\" following revelations from Edward Snowden of unlawful spying by the NSA. <\/p>\n
Rand Paul is urging anyone in the US with a mobile phone to join the group action which declares the government is not permitted to access the public's emails and phone records without a warrant. <\/p>\n
Mr Paul said the purpose of the action is to \"protect the Fourth Amendment,\" the part of the US Constitution which prevents unreasonable searches and seizures. <\/p>\n
\"The question here is whether or not, constitutionally, you can have a single warrant apply to millions of people,\" he told Fox News. <\/p>\n
\"So we thought, what better way to illustrate the point than having hundreds of thousands of Americans sign-up for a class-action suit.\" <\/p>\n
Mr Paul's move comes as a secretive US intelligence court decided the NSA can continue to collect phone data from American citizens for at least another 90 days. <\/p>\n
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) renewed the NSA surveillance programme on Friday, despite a panel of advisors advising the President Obama that a warrant must be obtained for each search. <\/p>\n
US government lawyers have also moved to block a surprise decision by a district judge that ruled the NSA phone records programme was unlawful. <\/p>\n
Judge Richard Leon said the NSA's programme was \"almost Orwellian,\" a reference to George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. <\/p>\n
He added there was little evidence the operation had prevented terrorist attacks, a conclusion also reached by the advisory panel to President Obama. <\/p>\n
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