guardian | The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone
records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest
telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The
document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration
the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected
indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected
of any wrongdoing.
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the
government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified
three-month period ending on July 19.
Under the terms of the
blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as
is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and
duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not
covered.
The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates
in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying
powers.
Under the Bush administration, officials in security
agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call
records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and
top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a
massive scale under President Obama.
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