The UK Guardian Newspaper published a story yesterday disclosing that US telephone communications giant VERIZON received a top secret court order dated 25th April, to collect the ‘metadata’ of its customers. The court order demands that “an electronic copy of the following tangible things” be made and handed over to the FBI.
The Court Order demanded that Verizon submit “All call detail records” or “telephony metadata” (i) Between the United States and abroad; or (ii) Wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls”.
Metadata is classified as basically everything about the call except the contents of the call itself, including phone numbers of both parties involved, their location and call duration etc.
The Court Order is made under the Patriot Act, 50 USC section 1861 which refers to “business records” and states that the records should be obtained “on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration the order” which lasts for three months from April and will finish on 19th July, 2013.
The Order is deemed to be Top Secret and states: “It is further ordered that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this order.”
Two US Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have warned the American people ‘about the scope of the Obama administration’s surveillance activities,’ saying that the public would be ‘stunned’ by the methods of domestic spying. Their letter to Attorney General Eric Holder said “there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.”
Julia Sanchez who is a surveillance expert with the Cato Institute said “vacuuming all metadata up indiscriminately would be an extraordinary repudiation of any pretense of constraint or particularized suspicion,” and yet this is exactly what the order is demanding.