Verizon Business Network Services, one of the country’s leading communications providers, has been ordered to supply to the National Security Agency with information about all phone calls it handles, according to a report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper on Thursday.
The Guardian provided a link to a court order issued in April by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which tells Verizon it must supply certain information on all phone calls made from inside the United States as well as calls made to phones abroad.
The order applies to a three-month period starting April 25.
Judge Roger Vinson, of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, signed the order, which gives blanket permission to spy on hundreds of millions of phone users.
The Guardian sought confirmation from the National Security Agency, the White House and the Department of Justice, all of whom declined to comment. The order also bars Verizon from disclosing information about the order, and the company declined comment to The Guardian.
The order commands Verizon to supply all “telephony metadata” on an “ongoing daily basis” — in short, the phone numbers of the caller and the call recipient. It says the metadata would not include names, addresses or financial information of customers.
The information would enable the National Security Agency to decipher communications patterns within the US as well as between the US and abroad. The order is unusual in its broad, blanket vacuuming effect of data, in that it does not mention a specific threat or group that was being probed.
The judge cited a provision under the Patriot Act, passed in 2001 after the September 11 terrorist attacks, to justify the order.
The report comes amidst ongoing uproar over the seizure by the FBI of extensive telephone records of The Associated Press news agency, which was disclosed last month. Investigators were looking for the source of a leak to the AP about a quashed terrorist plot.