Conservative attorney Larry Klayman is continuing his efforts to have his lawsuit against the National Security Agency heard by the U.S. Supreme Court as quickly as possible.
"What we're saying is that there's no time to lose. When you lose your constitutional rights even for one minute, that's one minute too long," Klayman told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
"We're trying to accelerate … because the entirety of the American people are continuing to have their cell phones, their internet communications, their email, text messages and social media surveyed and watched by the government ... We effectively live in a police state."
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Klayman, who founded the groups Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, won a court ruling questioning the legality of the NSA's phone-call tracking database, but wants the Supreme Court to expedite the normal appeals process and take up the case directly.
He sent a petition to the high court on Monday.
"One of the things the judge found is that through this metadata surveillance, which grabs everybody's telephone messages and calls, they haven't stopped one terrorist attack. So what are they doing?" Klayman said.
"If they're trying to stop terrorism, this has to be for another purpose, which I believe is to keep the American people down — not to question the political establishment or lift your head up. Complain and you'll have that head chopped off. They can do it.
"They can gather data, they can give it to the IRS, they can give it to the Justice Department, and people can't communicate these days without thinking they're being listened to and that's simply unacceptable."
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