The Obama administration has been collecting millions of telephone records from U.S. Verizon customers as part of a top-secret court order which started in April according to British newspaper The Guardian.
The administration defended its collection of telephone records from Verizon as part of U.S. counter terrorism efforts this week. The move has re-ignited a worldwide debate over privacy even as the government has called the process "critical" to protecting Americans from attacks.
The admission came after the newspaper published a report on June 5 detailing a secret court order related to the records of "millions" of Verizon Communications customers.
Privacy advocates are outraged at the court order, and have called it "unconstitutional government surveillance" according to Reuters.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not confirm the report, but did say that the published court order involves only telephone numbers or the length of a specific call, and "not the caller's identity or the content of the telephone calls."
The order was granted on April 25 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which overlooks secret government requests for private information that could help identify terrorists in the United States according to ABC News.
"Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counter terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States," the senior administration official said according to Reuters.
The Obama administration is already is under fire for searching Associated Press journalists' calling records and the emails of a Fox News Channel reporter as part of its "inquiries" into leaked government information according to Reuters.
Verizon has declined to comment as of press time according to The Guardian.
The court order was issued one week after U.S. law enforcement officials tracked down the two brothers accused of carrying out the deadly Boston Marathon bombing. Investigators in that case had been looking into calls made from their phones and had been searching for one brother's laptop.
The April order forced Verizon to turn over both international calling records and domestic records, and refers to mobile and landline numbers, according to the Guardian's obtained copy, which was labeled "top secret" and issued by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The four-page document does not explain why the order was given or whether it was linked to any specific person or investigation.
The order expires on July 19 according to Reuters.
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