Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday it filed a suit alleging the US Drug Enforcement Administration illegally collected records of its phone calls to foreign countries for years.
The lawsuit comes after a series of media reports and disclosures in public documents revealing a surveillance programme dating back to the 1990s, which reportedly collected data on virtually all international phone calls.
“At Human Rights Watch we work with people who are sometimes in life-or-death situations, where speaking out can make them a target,” said Dinah PoKempner, general counsel at the watchdog group.
“Whom we communicate with and when is often extraordinarily sensitive — and its information that we wouldn’t turn over to the government lightly.” The suit filed in federal court in California asks a judge to declare the surveillance a violation of the group’s constitutional rights, and to purge all records from the programme.
