<div dir="ltr">
<div class="">
<div class="">
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif" alt="The New York Times" align="left" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0"></a>
</div>
<div class="">
</div>
</div>
<br clear="all"><hr align="left" size="1">
<div class="">June 5, 2013</div>
<h1>U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/charlie_savage/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by CHARLIE SAVAGE"><span>CHARLIE SAVAGE</span></a></span> and <span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/edward_wyatt/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by EDWARD WYATT"><span>EDWARD WYATT</span></a></span></h6>
<div id="articleBody">
<p>
WASHINGTON — 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 <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/usa_patriot_act/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about the USA Patriot Act." class="">Patriot Act</a>, according to a <a title="Court document, via Guardian Web site" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order">highly classified court order</a> disclosed on Wednesday night. </p>
<p>
The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/verizon_communications_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More information about Verizon Communications Inc" class="">Verizon Communications</a> subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about National Security Agency, U.S." class="">National Security Agency</a>
all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within
the United States, including local telephone calls.” </p>
<p>
The order does not apply to the content of the communications. </p>
<p>
Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s 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>
<p>
The four-page order was <a title="Guardian article" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order">disclosed Wednesday evening by the newspaper The Guardian. </a>
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.
“We will respond as soon as we can,” said Marci Green Miller, a
National Security Agency spokeswoman, in an e-mail. </p>
<p>
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 “tangible things” like a
business’s customer records. The provision was expanded by Section 215
of the Patriot Act, which Congress enacted after the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. </p>
<p>
The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” 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’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of
leaks. </p>
<p>
The collection of call logs is set to expire in July unless the court extends it. </p>
<p>
The collection of communications logs — or calling “metadata” — is
believed to be a major component of the Bush administration’s 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>
<p>
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 “absent some explanation I haven’t thought of, this
looks like the largest assault on privacy since the N.S.A. wiretapped
Americans in clear violation of the law” under the Bush administration.
“On what possible basis has the government refused to tell us that it
believes that the law authorizes this kind of request?” she said.
</p>
<p>
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>
<p>
“We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how
these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot
Act,” they wrote last year <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/325953-85512347-senators-ron-wyden-mark-udall-letter-to.html">in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr</a>. </p>
<p>
They added: “As 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’t know what its government thinks the law says.” </p>
<p>
A spokesman for Senator Wyden did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the Verizon order. </p>
<p>
The senators were angry because the Obama administration <a href="http://www.justice.gov/nsd/opa/pr/testimony/2011/nsd-testimony-110309.html">described Section 215</a>
orders as being similar to a grand jury subpoena for obtaining business
records, like a suspect’s 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>
<p>
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 “relevant” to a national-security
investigation. </p>
<p>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/us/politics/justice-dept-is-accused-of-misleading-public-on-patriot-act.html">The Justice Department has denied being misleading about the Patriot Act</a>.
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>
<p>
The New York Times <a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Secret-law-FOIA-complaint.pdf">filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2011</a>
for a report describing the government’s interpretation of its
surveillance powers under the Patriot Act. But the Obama administration
withheld the report, and a judge dismissed the case. </p>
<div class="">
</div>
</div>
-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br>
</div>