The chairwoman of the US Senate Intelligence committee has confirmed that the top secret court order collecting the telephone records of millions of US Verizon customers is a three-month renewal of a continuing practice.
The collection of records was “on an ongoing daily basis,”
beginning on April 25, 2013 and ending July 19, 2013, Dianne
Feinstein, a Democratic Senator from California confirmed to
reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
The top secret order required Verizon, one of the largest telecom
agencies in the US, to provide both the FBI and the NSA
information on all telephone calls made through its systems, both
domestically and to foreign countries.
According to a copy of the order, Verizon is required to disclose
the numbers of both parties during a call, as well as location,
call duration, and other unique data on an “ongoing, daily
basis.” Meaning that, regardless of whether an individual is
suspected of or linked to any crime, the data of all Verizon
customers is currently being delivered in bulk to the
intelligence agency.
Verizon did not confirm the existence of the top secret order. In
a memo sent to employees on Thursday, they stated that they were
forbidden “from revealing the order’s existence.”
The court order expressively forbade Verizon from disclosing the
existence of any US government request for the company’s customer
records, according to the original Guardian exclusive.
It is suspected that the practice is ongoing, stretching back far
beyond April 2013, possibly even to 2006. One anonymous expert
contacted by the Washington Post in the wake of the scandal said
that the order appeared to be a routine renewal of a strikingly
similar order issued by the same court in 2006, and renewed every
three months since.
As to the authority claimed by the government via this order,
that is specifically cited to fall under the “business records”
provision of the PATRIOT Act of 2001, which was granted a
four-year extension by President Obama in May of 2011.
It remains unclear as to whether the order, which spans a
three-month period, represents a single instance, or is
indicative of recurring cases of Verizon and other telephony
providers being ordered to disclose all their clients’ call
records.
The practice may also be more widespread among communications
data companies than initially believed: CNBC contacted Sprint, a
global provider of internet and communications services. The
company told CNBC on Thursday that it had no comment on whether
it may have received a similar FISA court order.
This article originally appeared on: RT