The Wikimedia Foundation, owner of Wikipedia, and eight other groups filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against the National Security Agency and the Department of Justice, challenging the NSA's mass-surveillance program.
"Our aim in filing this suit is to end this mass surveillance program in order to protect the rights of our users around the world," the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation wrote in a blog post about the suit filed in Maryland. The American Civil Liberties Union is representing the groups and posted the full complaint online. Other plaintiffs include Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
The complaint focuses on the NSA's "upstream" surveillance program revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which the intelligence agency uses to tap directly into Internet infrastructure to find the communications of foreigners who may pose a threat to national security, or Americans who may communicate with them. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the DOJ "is reviewing the complaint," and the NSA did not respond to a request for comment.
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