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The US National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans, according to the Guardian newspaper.

The British paper published what it said was a secret court order directing the Verizon company to hand over electronic data on all its customers on an "ongoing daily basis".

Civil liberties groups said the details of the report were "stunning".

The US government, security agencies and Verizon have not commented.

The US Center for Constitutional Rights said it appeared to be "the broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued".

The document published by the Guardian was signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the secret Intelligence Surveillance Court on 25 April and lasts until 19 July.

It falls under a section of the Bush-era Patriot Act which allows access to business records for "foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations" - it was unclear whether it was a one-off order or a renewal of an existing request.

The order requires Verizon - one of the largest phone companies in the US - to disclose to the NSA the metadata of all calls it processes, both domestic and international.

Such metadata includes telephone numbers, calling card numbers, the serial numbers of phones used and the time and duration of calls. It does not include the content of a call or the callers' addresses or financial information.

The order also contains a gagging order, requiring that "no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order".

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," said the Guardian report's writer, Glenn Greenwald.

The paper said the NSA, the White House and the Department of Justice had all declined to comment. A spokesman for Verizon, Ed McFadden, said the company had no comment.

The US government has previously said obtaining metadata does not require a warrant because it does not constitute personal information.

But rights groups have fiercely criticised the order, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) describing it as "beyond Orwellian".

"It provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies," said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU's deputy legal director.

Former Vice President Al Gore said in a tweet: "In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?"

Two Democrat senators have been pressing the Obama administration to be clear about the scope of its public surveillance.

Last year, Mark Udall and Ron Wyden wrote to US Attorney General Eric Holder saying they believed "most Americans would be stunned" by the government's "secret legal interpretations" of the Patriot Act.

The White House came under heavy criticism last month after papers were leaked showing it had gathered the phone records of journalists at the Associated Press.

The story prompted both questions from both Republicans and Democrats in Washington about how the White House was balancing the need for national security with privacy rights.

The Obama administration has aggressively investigated disclosures of classified information to the media, bringing more cases against people suspected of leaking such material than any previous administration, correspondents say.

Expert: NSA phone data collection has likely been ongoing since 2006By Max Fisher, Published: June 6, 2013 at 10:28 am

A leaked court document appears to show that the National Security Agency, a U.S. intelligence agency that specializes in data collection, secretly ordered Verizon to hand over customer information for tens of millions of Americans. That information is something called “telephony metadata,” which includes basic information about who you called and how long you spoke but does not actually wiretap the phone call. The order was first reported by The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald.

The court order told Verizon to share its customers’ metadata “on an ongoing daily basis” starting April 25, 2013 and ending July 19, 2013. But it turns out that this may not have just been a temporary, three-month program. The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima spoke to an expert who looked at the court order and suspects it may have just been to renew a program that began running in 2006:

An expert in this aspect of the law said Wednesday night that the order appears to be a routine renewal of a similar order first issued by the same court in 2006. The expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said that the order is reissued routinely every 90 days and that it is not related to any particular investigation by the FBI or any other agency.

The expert referred to such orders as “rubber stamps” sought by the telephone companies to protect themselves after the disclosure in 2005 that widespread warrantless wiretaps could leave them liable for damages.

The order falls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the government to make broad demands on telephone carriers for information about calls. In this case, the order requires Verizon to provide “ongoing, daily” information about “all call detail records . . . created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad; or wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

That original order was actually reported at the time by USA Today’s Leslie Cauley, who wrote in May 2006, “The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.” Cauley’s report continued (my emphasis added):

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

Based on the leaked court order, if it’s accurate as it appears to be, it would seem that this effort could still be ongoing today.

A former CIA technical worker has been identified by the UK's Guardian newspaper as the source of leaks about US surveillance programmes.



Edward Snowden, 29, is described by the paper as an ex-CIA technical assistant, currently employed by defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

The Guardian said his identity was being revealed at his own request.

The recent revelations are that US agencies gathered millions of phone records and monitored internet data.

The Guardian quotes Mr Snowden as saying he flew to Hong Kong on 20 May, where he holed himself up in a hotel.

He told the paper: "I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things… I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded."

Asked what he thought would happen to him, he replied: "Nothing good."

He said he had gone to Hong Kong because of its "strong tradition of free speech".

In a statement, Booz Allen Hamilton confirmed Mr Snowden had been an employee for less than three months.

"If accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," the statement said.