U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, expects to file a class-action lawsuit against the National Security Agency by the end of January.

The planned suit comes in the wake of revelations from former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden that the NSA has been collecting Americans’ email and phone records.

“We think that every American’s right to privacy is a very important right,” Paul said.

He said he hopes the lawsuit will eventually be heard by the Supreme Court and that the court will decide that personal records are private even if held by a third party.

He said he knows there are obstacles to the lawsuit, as the Supreme Court ruled in the 1970s that people don’t have an expectation of privacy when those records are held by a third party.

Paul said he’s also concerned that decisions about things such as phone records are being made by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

“There are many who say you can’t really find justice unless you have an open court,” he said.

Speaking to the Daily News on Wednesday, Paul said about 300,000 people had signed onto the class-action law suit.

Information about joining the lawsuit can be found on Paul’s Facebook page or at the website for his political action committee RANDPAC.

The lawsuit won’t be paid for with taxpayer money, Paul said.

On the RANDPAC website, when people are prompted to sign up to join the lawsuit, they are also asked to make a donation to “help rally up to 10 million Americans to support my lawsuit to stop Big Brother from infringing on our Fourth Amendment freedoms.”

The complaint is being worked on and should be filed in the next couple of weeks, Paul said.

Lawyers involved in the case include Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general and former candidate for governor who filed suit against the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

The issue doesn’t break along party lines, Paul said.

“I think that it’s an issue that resonates with a lot of Americans, regardless of party,” he said.

It resonates particularly with young people, who use cellphones and the Internet more frequently, Paul said.

Many are appalled by the idea that the information they have online could be seen by the government, he said.

Paul said he believes that the 300,000 who have signed onto the lawsuit represent millions of Americans who feel the government has overstepped in its data collection.

Paul’s suit isn’t the first against NSA practices. Others have been met with differing results. 

In one lawsuit, a federal judge ruled that the collection of telephone records likely violates the unreasonable search ban in the Constitution and granted an injunction on the collection of records from the two plaintiffs in the case.

In another, a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union was dismissed by a judge. The group has since appealed the dismissal, according to its website.

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.

— Follow government beat writer Katie Brandenburg at twitter.com/BGDNgovtbeat or visit bgdailynews.com.