Lawsuit filed by Wikipedia operator over US government surveillance

A lawsuit filed by the operator of Wikipedia and other organisations challenges the US government's mass online surveillance programmes, claiming that tapping into the internet's backbone is illegal.

The lawsuit was filed in Maryland federal court on Tuesday by the Wikimedia Foundation, Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch and other organisations.

The lawsuit said the effort by the National Security Agency and other intelligence services "exceeds the scope of the authority that Congress provided" and violated US constitutional guarantees.

"We're filing suit today on behalf of our readers and editors everywhere," said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.

"Surveillance erodes the original promise of the internet: an open space for collaboration and experimentation, and a place free from fear."

The lawsuit claims that by tapping into the internet backbone, "the NSA is seizing Americans' communications en masse while they are in transit, and it is searching the contents of substantially all international text-based communications," effectively sweeping up data of many people unrelated to the effort to thwart terrorism.

"Rather than limit itself to monitoring Americans' communications with the foreign targets, the NSA is spying on everyone, trying to find out who might be talking or reading about those targets," said Patrick Toomey of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing the organisations.