NSA is currently collecting phone records of millions of Verizon clients, one of the major U.S. telecom companies, under a “top secret” order issued in April by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), according to The Guardian online edition. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a secret U.S. federal court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978 to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign agents inside the U.S.
Guardian reports that it in the possession of a copy of the court order that compel Verizon to give National Security Agency (NSA) “daily” information about all calls made through its systems, both in the United States, including local calls, and between the United States 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,” writes The Guardian.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has issued an order for the FBI on April 25, which gives the government unlimited authority to obtain data for a period of three months up to July 19 2013. According to the order, phone numbers of both parties of a conversation are delivered and also data on the location, duration of the call, the unique identification data and time of calls. The content of the conversation is not covered by order.
The disclosure could reignite the debate about the limits of U.S. government power to spy in the country. During the George W. Bush administration, officials of the security agencies revealed that NSA was collecting data on phone records of some journalists on a large scale, but this is the first significant secret document revealing the continuation of this practice under President Barack Obama.
The unlimited nature of the records delivered to the NSA is extremely unusual, as the FISA court issues such orders for specific targets, suspected of being an agent, a terrorist group or a foreign country, or for a finite number of specific individual targets.
The injunction signed by Judge Roger Vinson requires Verizon to produce copies of “all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.
Contacted by the newspaper, NSA, White House and Justice Department declined to comment on the subject, before the publication of the material.
“We decline comment,” said Ed McFadden, a spokesman for Verizon.
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