U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls<\/a> by Charlie Savage in The New York Times.<\/p>\nThe Text:<\/strong> The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.<\/p>\nThe order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over \u201con an ongoing daily basis\u201d to the National Security Agency all call logs \u201cbetween the United States and abroad\u201d or \u201cwholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.\u201d<\/p>\n
The order does not apply to the content of the communications.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation\u2019s largest telecommunications and Internet providers for corporations. It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, like its residential or cellphone services, or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of both Verizon and AT&T declined to comment Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
The four-page order was disclosed Wednesday evening by the newspaper The Guardian. Obama administration officials at the F.B.I. and the White House also declined to comment on it Wednesday evening, but did not deny the report, and a person familiar with the order confirmed its authenticity. \u201cWe will respond as soon as we can,\u201d said Marci Green Miller, a National Security Agency spokeswoman, in an e-mail.<\/p>\n
The order was sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that regulates domestic surveillance for national security purposes, that allows the government to secretly obtain \u201ctangible things\u201d like a business\u2019s customer records. The provision was expanded by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which Congress enacted after the 9\/11 terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n
The order was marked \u201cTOP SECRET\/\/SI\/\/NOFORN,\u201d referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration\u2019s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.<\/p>\n
The collection of call logs is set to expire in July unless the court extends it.<\/p>\n
The collection of communications logs \u2014 or calling \u201cmetadata\u201d \u2014 is believed to be a major component of the Bush administration\u2019s program of surveillance that took place without court orders. The newly disclosed order raised the question of whether the government continued that type of information collection by bringing it under the Patriot Act.<\/p>\n
The disclosure late Wednesday seemed likely to inspire further controversy over the scope of government surveillance. Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties advocacy group, said that \u201cabsent some explanation I haven\u2019t thought of, this looks like the largest assault on privacy since the N.S.A. wiretapped Americans in clear violation of the law\u201d under the Bush administration. \u201cOn what possible basis has the government refused to tell us that it believes that the law authorizes this kind of request?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For several years, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, have been cryptically warning that the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under that section of the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming to the public if it knew about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act,\u201d they wrote last year in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.<\/p>\n
They added: \u201cAs we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn\u2019t know what its government thinks the law says.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Senator Wyden did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the Verizon order.<\/p>\n
The senators were angry because the Obama administration described Section 215 orders as being similar to a grand jury subpoena for obtaining business records, like a suspect\u2019s hotel or credit card records, in the course of an ordinary criminal investigation. The senators said the secret interpretation of the law was nothing like that.<\/p>\n
Section 215 of the Patriot Act made it easier to get an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain business records so long as they were merely deemed \u201crelevant\u201d to a national-security investigation.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department has denied being misleading about the Patriot Act. Department officials have acknowledged since 2009 that a secret, sensitive intelligence program is based on the law and have insisted that their statements about the matter have been accurate.<\/p>\n
The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2011 for a report describing the government\u2019s interpretation of its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act. But the Obama administration withheld the report, and a judge dismissed the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls by Charlie Savage in The New York Times. The Text: The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Verizon](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/verizon-obama.jpg\")
<\/p>\n