It's not often that you see President Obama sued for $3 billion, but two lawsuits filed in federal court against the NSA's recently unveiled domestic surveillance programs purport to do just that.On Tuesday, the ACLU and New York Civil Liberties Union filed their claim in New York's Southern District Court. The ACLU suit doesn't hold back, naming as defendants freshly-appointed Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel, US Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller III, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and NSA Director Keith Alexander.The ACLU and NYCLU claim that the government's tracking of phone metadata goes beyond what's allowed even under the Patriot Act, and that their surveillance programs violated the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution. They even namedrop Patriot Act co-author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, an author of the Patriot Act who claims that the NSA's programs go beyond what Congress meant to authorize in the wake of September 11.As current and former subscribers of Verizon Business Network Services, which the Guardian revealed was under secret order from the FISA court to hand over daily records of all customer calls, the organizations allege that government prying on this scale poses “a chilling effect on whistleblowers and others” who would otherwise approach them for legal assistance.Since so much of its work requires strict confidence, the ACLU contends that the NSA communications dragnet stymies its work on human rights violations, government misdeeds (such as these), reproductive services and any sensitive topic the organization tackles. As such, its suit demands an end to NSA data collection of this kind and for the agency to purge all call records it may have on the two groups.The second suit goes several steps further, naming not only intelligence agency brass, but also President Obama; Verizon and its CEO, Lowell McAdam; plus Roger Vinson, the FISA judge who signed the leaked order.The class-action suit was filed June 10 on behalf of all Verizon customers by former federal prosecutor Larry Klayman, founder of the organizations Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch. Touted as the “one man Tea Party” on the Freedom Watch site, Klayman has a checkered CV that includes a number of other suits against Obama over the Affordable Care Act, gun control and his birth certificate, plus cases filed against the so-called 'Ground Zero mosque,' OPEC, Mark Zuckerberg and the country of Iran, among others.Klayman and co-plaintiffs Charles and Mary Ann Strange, whose son was one of 37 soldiers killed in in August 2011 when their helicopter was shot down over Afghanistan, claim that their vocal criticism of the Obama administration have made them a particular target for NSA phone record snooping. Both Klayman and the Stranges are Verizon customers.Like the ACLU suit, Klayman's filing alleges that the NSA surveillance program not only chill but “kill” free speech by instilling fear of being watched in both business and personal communications. On behalf of Verizon customers everywhere, the suit seeks damages in excess of $3 billion.In a statement on the Freedom Watch site, Klayman invites all Verizon users to join his suit. Klayman is also reportedly filing a second class-action suit against all nine companies implicated in the NSA's PRISM scheme, including AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and YouTube.
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