Senator Rand Paul announced on Hannity last night that he is filing a class action lawsuit against the NSA over its illegal and unconstitutional collection of the private data of almost every American citizen.  Senator Paul’s own campaign site for 2016 also has information about the lawsuit, with a form where people can request to have themselves added.  While there probably won’t be a payout, Paul says that it allows people en masse to stand up against the federal government’s overreaching intelligence programs.  [Note: It should be mentioned that Paul’s campaign site itself is not working, but the direct link to the lawsuit signup is.]

Paul says that “everyone in the U.S. with a cellphone would be eligible to join the suit as a class action”…people who want to join the suit are telling the government that it can’t have access to emails and phone records without permission or without a specific warrant.

Paul says the lead lawyer in the suit is Virginia’s former attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli.

This will be something to watch.  It goes without saying that we hope this isn’t purely a political stunt.  The fact that Paul’s campaign site gets a VBScript runtime error but the direct link to the lawsuit works could end up being a concern for the more paranoid/informed among us.  That being said, we’ll keep an eye on things.