Civil right organization EFF this week continued its quest to stop unconstitutional surveillance of people’s communications and communications records by filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other governmental agencies on behalf of AT&T customers.

The lawsuit is aimed "at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it,” EFF said, adding that documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein will serve as evidence in the case.

According to them, Klein will show documents that reveal AT&T’s practices of routing copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the National Security Agency. The same evidence will be used in EFF’s lawsuit against AT&T filed in 2006, when they attempted to stop the carrier from participating in the illegal surveillance program.

Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston described this as a “second front” in the battle to stop NSA’s practices of illegal surveillance of millions of Americans. According to him, those personally responsible for authorizing and participating in the spying program will he held responsible.

“Demanding personal accountability from President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others responsible for NSA’s dragnet surveillance of ordinary American’s communications is the best way to guarantee that such blatantly illegal spying will not be authorized in the future,” EFF said.

In July this year, EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice over the government’s practices to track people’s mobile phones.

The initiative started as the Department of Justice refused to release records and tracking policies, following a request by ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act in November 2007, after reports of using cell phones to pinpoint someone’s location without a warrant or court oversight emerged.