NSA Is Collecting Phone Records Of Millions Of Verizon Customers Under Secret Court Order
By Joseph Menn and Sinead Carew
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. National Security Agency is collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon Communications customers, according to a secret court order obtained and published by the Guardian newspaper’s website.
The order marked “Top Secret” and issued by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directs Verizon’s Business Network Services Inc and Verizon Business Services units to hand over electronic data including all calling records on an “ongoing, daily basis” until the order expires on July 19, 2013.
The order can be seen at: http://r.reuters.com/kap68t
Signed by Judge Roger Vinson at the request of the FBI, the order covers each phone number dialed by all customers and location and routing data, along with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the contents of the communications.
The disclosure comes as the Obama administration is already under fire on other privacy and First Amendment issues. In particular, it is being criticized for a search of Associated Press journalists’ calling records and the emails of a Fox television reporter in leak inquiries.
Officials at the White House and the NSA declined immediate comment. Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden declined to comment.
MORE...
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/05/nsa-is-collecting-phone-records-of-millions-of-verizon-customers-under-secret-court-order-report/
COMMENT: No worries...it is 'our people' collecting the info. 
spit
= new reply since forum marked as read
What a shitbag of RW trollery that rag has become. 
And the haters harf down every morsel.
I'm sure all cell phone carriers are guilty of this. 
from right-wing talking points.
"I was never sanctioned or disciplined by any bar, court, or anyone else. I decided voluntarily to wind down my practice in 2005 because I could, and because, after ten years, I was bored with litigating full-time and wanted to do other things which I thought were more engaging and could make more of an impact, including political writing."
Yeah, you're trying to slander him.
Prove he was disbarred.
Also:
"In seven-plus years of political writing, I have written a grand total of twice for Cato: the first was a 2009 report on the success of drug decriminalization in Portugal, and the second was a 2010 online debate in which I argued against former Bush officials about the evils of the surveillance state.
I not only disclosed those writings but wrote about them and featured them multiple times on my blog as it happened: see here and here as but two examples. In 2008, I spoke at a Cato event on the radicalism and destructiveness of Bush/Cheney executive power theories.That's the grand total of all the work I ever did for or with Cato in my life. The fees for those two papers and that one speech were my standard writing and speaking fees. Those payments are a miniscule, microscopic fraction of my writing and speaking income over the last 7 years. I have done no paying work of any kind with them since that online surveillance debate in 2010 (I spoke three times at Cato for free: once to debate the theme of my 2007 book on the failure of the Bush administration, and twice when I presented my paper advocating drug decriminalization).
I have done far more work for, and received far greater payments from, the ACLU, with which I consulted for two years (see here). I spoke at the Socialism Conference twice - once in 2011 and once in 2012 - and will almost certainly do so again in 2013. I'll speak or write basically anywhere where I can have my ideas heard without any constraints. Moreover, I'll work with almost anyone - the ACLU, Cato or anyone else - to end the evils of the Drug War and the Surveillance State. And I'll criticize anyone I think merits it, as I did quite harshly with the Koch Brothers in 2011: here.
The very suggestion that there is something wrong with writing for or speaking at CATO is inane and childish. The claim that it means I 'worked at CATO' is just an obvious lie. If writing for or speaking at CATO makes one a right-wing CATO-employed libertarian, then say hello to the following right-wing libertarian CATO employees, all of whom have been writers for or speakers at the CATO Institute in the past:
Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas (Writing for CATO's Unbound: here and here);
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (speaking about surveillance issues at CATO in January, 2011, speaking again at CATO in July, 2012 about FISA, and favorably citing CATO);
Democratic Rep. Jared Polis (defending CATO as "a leader in fighting to end the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and helping to end the War on Drugs"
.
the ACLU's Legislative Counsel Michelle Richardson (speaking at the CATO Institute's 2011 event on FISA);
Brown University Professor Glenn Loury (writing for CATO's Unbound);
liberal blogger and Clinton Treasury official Brad DeLong (writing for CATO's Unbound);
Harvard law Professor Lawrence Lessig (writing for CATO's Unbound);
liberal blogger and GWU Professor Henry Farrell (writing for CATO's Unbound)"
I disagree.
And I don't owe Greenwald or any other Koch-funded "libertarian" any loyalty, admiration, the benefit of the doubt or anything else. Why would I? In my view he's a slandering fink. And he's clearly not a Democrat so why would you care what I or anyone else think of Glenn Greenwald? He's a RW clown IMHO. YMMV. Sorry.
