Two US civil liberties groups filed lawsuits today challenging the legality of President George W. Bush's domestic spying program and demanding the practice be ended immediately.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the lawsuits "frivolous" and defended Mr Bush's authorization of domestic eavesdropping on US citizens without a court order as legal, saying it was aimed at detecting and preventing attacks by al Qaeda.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency on behalf of scholars, attorneys, journalists and nonprofit groups that regularly communicate by telephone and e-mail with people in the Middle East.
The suit filed in US district court for eastern Michigan also names NSA Director Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander as a defendant. It seeks a court order declaring the spying program is illegal and ordering its immediate and permanent halt.
Separately, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has provided legal aid to people detained or interrogated in Washington's declared war on terrorism, said it had filed a suit in a federal court in New York against Bush and the heads of security agencies challenging the program and seeking to halt it.
Mr Bush acknowledged last month that he had authorized the NSA to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mails of US citizens without first obtaining warrants in an effort to track al Qaeda members and other terrorism suspects.
News of the program set off an outcry from both Democrats and Republicans who questioned whether the administration was violating the Constitution by spying on Americans.
The ACLU said its legal complaint charges that the spying program violates Americans' rights to free speech and privacy under the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based group that joined the ACLU suit, said the NSA eavesdropping "chills efforts by the American Muslim community to build bridges of understanding."
"It's clear from all reports that the American Muslim community is the primary target of any secret surveillance," CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said.