The scale of America's surveillance state was laid bare on Thursday as senior politicians revealed that the US counter-terrorism effort had swept up swaths of personal data from the phone calls of millions of citizens for years. After the revelation by the Guardian of a sweeping secret court order that authorised the FBI to seize all call records from a subsidiary of Verizon, the Obama administration sought to defuse mounting anger over what critics described as the broadest surveillance ruling ever issued.

1. UK and World news
A White House spokesman said that laws governing such orders 'are something that
have been in place for a number of years now'. Photograph: Rex Features
The scale of America's surveillance state was laid bare on Thursday as
senior politicians revealed that the US counter-terrorism effort had swept
up swaths of personal data from the phone calls of millions of citizens for
years.
After the revelation by the Guardian of a sweeping secret court order that
authorised the FBI to seize all call records from a subsidiary of Verizon,
the Obama administration sought to defuse mounting anger over what
critics described as the broadest surveillance ruling ever issued.
A White House spokesman said that laws governing such orders "are
something that have been in place for a number of years now" and were
vital for protecting national security. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic
chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the Verizon court
order had been in place for seven years. "People want the homeland
kept safe," Feinstein said.
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Anger swells after NSA phone records
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Anger swells after NSA phone records
collection revelations
Senior politicians reveal that US counter-terrorism efforts have
swept up personal data from American citizens for years
• NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data,
secret files reveal
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Dan Roberts and Spencer Ackerman in Washington
The Guardian, Thursday 6 June 2013 18.58 EDT
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2. But as the implications of the blanket approval for obtaining phone data
reverberated around Washington and beyond, anger grew among other
politicians.
Intelligence committee member Mark Udall, who has previously warned
in broad terms about the scale of government snooping, said: "This sort
of widescale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of
government overreach I've said Americans would find shocking." Former
vice-president Al Gore described the "secret blanket surveillance" as
"obscenely outrageous".
The Verizon order was made under the provisions of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) as amended by the Patriot Act of
2001, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But one of the authors of
the Patriot Act, Republican congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, said he
was troubled by the Guardian revelations. He said that he had written to
the attorney general, Eric Holder, questioning whether "US constitutional
rights were secure".
He said: "I do not believe the broadly drafted Fisa order is consistent with
the requirements of the Patriot Act. Seizing phone records of millions of
innocent people is excessive and un-American."
The White House sought to defend what it called "a critical tool in
protecting the nation from terrorist threats". White House spokesman
Josh Earnest said Fisa orders were used to "support important and
highly sensitive intelligence collection operations" on which members of
Congress were fully briefed.
"The intelligence community is conducting court-authorized intelligence
activities pursuant to a public statute with the knowledge and oversight of
Congress and the intelligence community in both houses of Congress,"
Earnest said.
He pointed out that the order only relates to the so-called metadata
surrounding phone calls rather than the content of the calls themselves.
"The order reprinted overnight does not allow the government to listen in
on anyone's telephone calls," Earnest said.
"The information acquired does not include the content of any
communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to
call details, such as a telephone number or the length of a telephone
call."
But such metadata can provide authorities with vast knowledge about a
caller's identity. Particularly when cross-checked against other public
records, the metadata can reveal someone's name, address, driver's
licence, credit history, social security number and more. Government
analysts would be able to work out whether the relationship between two
people was ongoing, occasional or a one-off.
The disclosure has reignited longstanding debates in the US over the
proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers.
Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Senate intelligence committee
who, along with Udell, has expressed concern about the extent of US
government surveillance, warned of "sweeping, dragnet surveillance". He
said: "I am barred by Senate rules from commenting on some of the
details at this time, However, I believe that when law-abiding Americans
call their friends, who they call, when they call, and where they call from
is private information.
"Collecting this data about every single phone call that every American
makes every day would be a massive invasion of Americans' privacy."
'Beyond Orwellian'
NSA collecting phone records of
millions of Verizon customers daily
NSA taps in to internet giants' systems
to mine user data, secret files reveal
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Revealed: NSA
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Court order forcing
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Obama's Verizon
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Could it happen in
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Verizon forced to
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Obama's Verizon phone
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carries on Bush's work

3. Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union,
said: "From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any
more alarming. It's a program in which some untold number of innocent
people have been put under the constant surveillance of government
agents.
"It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to
which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the
demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies."
Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had
disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by
the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents
have revealed the continuation of the practice under President Obama.
The order names Verizon Business Services, a division of Verizon
Communications. In its first-quarter earnings report, published in April,
Verizon Communications listed about 10 million commercial lines out of a
total of 121 million customers. The court order, which lasts for three
months from 25 April, does not specify what type of lines are being
tracked. It is not clear whether any additional orders exist to cover
Verizon's wireless and residential customers, or those of other phone
carriers.
Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a
specific, named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or
foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. The unlimited
nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely
unusual.
Senators Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and
Saxby Chambliss, the vice chairman, speak to reporters about the NSA cull of phone
records. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Feinstein said she believed the order had been in place for some time.
She said: "As far as I know this is the exact three-month renewal of what
has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out
by the [foreign intelligence surveillance] court under the business records
section of the Patriot Act. Therefore it is lawful. It has been briefed to
Congress."
The Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement that the secret
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4. ;
court order was unprecedented. "As far as we know this order from the
Fisa court is the broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued: it
requires no level of suspicion and applies to all Verizon [business
services] subscribers anywhere in the US.
"The Patriot Act's incredibly broad surveillance provision purportedly
authorizes an order of this sort, though its constitutionality is in question
and several senators have complained about it."
Russell Tice, a retired National Security Agency intelligence analyst and
whistleblower, said: "What is going on is much larger and more systemic
than anything anyone has ever suspected or imagined."
Although an anonymous senior Obama administration official said that
"on its face" the court order revealed by the Guardian did not authorise
the government to listen in on people's phone calls, Tice now believes
the NSA has constructed such a capability.
"I figured it would probably be about 2015" before the NSA had "the
computer capacity … to collect all digital communications word for word,"
Tice said. "But I think I'm wrong. I think they have it right now."
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