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The Guardian newspaper in London reported that mobile carrier Verizon is required to provide the National Security Agency daily with information on all telephone calls in its systems/AFP

World

Collecting phone records a tool against terror: US official

Under the order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered, the Guardian report explained.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had “granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19,” the paper reported.

The information was classed as metadata, it added.

The administration official, which noted that FISA court orders are classified, said the Guardian discusses “what purports to be an order issued by” that court.

The official said that “on its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls.”

The NSA, as part of a program secretly authorized by former president George W. Bush in October 2001, implemented a bulk collection of US telephone, Internet and email records.

In 2006, USA Today sent many jaws dropping when it reported that the NSA had “been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.”

It had been “using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity,” the paper reported.

“Until now, there has been no indication that the Obama administration implemented a similar program,” the Guardian report notes.

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