ACLU Sues Obama Administration to Stop "Dragnet" Phone Surveillance

New York Times:

The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its “dragnet” collection of logs of domestic phone calls, contending that the once-secret program — whose existence was exposed by a former National Security Agency contractor last week — is illegal and asking a judge to both stop it and order the records purged….

This case may be different [from ACLU cases that have been dismissed]. The government has now declassified the existence of the program on domestic call record “metadata.” And the A.C.L.U. itself is a customer of Verizon Business Network Services — the subsidiary of Verizon Communications that was the recipient of a leaked secret court order for all its domestic calling records — which it says gives it direct standing to bring the lawsuit.

I’m gonna send the ACLU a check on my next payday. I’d reckon that if anyone can beat back the Obama administration’s overreach—or at least give them a real run for their money—it’s the ACLU’s squadron of lawyers and cavalry of cooperating attorneys. if you want more, Slog tipper Greg points us to the Huffington Post, where they’ve posted the complaint.