The US government's National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting the telephone communication records of millions of Verizon customers in the US in accordance with a top secret court order issued at the end of April 2013.
Details of the NSA's activity are shown in a report that the Guardian claims to have, with the paper reporting that the records are being kept on an "ongoing, daily basis".
The NSA is reportedly collecting details of every single telephone call made using Verizon's systems, including within the US but also between customers in the US and all other countries, and regardless of any suspicion of criminal activity.
Data collected includes phone numbers of both parties on a call, location data, duration, unique identifiers and the time calls were made, however contents of the actual conversations themselves are apparently not being collected.
The court order to allow the data collection was granted by Fisa (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) on 25 April, and allows the NSA to collect all Verizon's call data until 19 July.
Such mass collection action was also undertaken by the Bush administration, but was publicly disclosed by the NSA. The current court order forbids Verizon disclosing the existence of the data collection order.
