"The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April," The Guardian reported.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the paper, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries, the report said.
Under the terms of the four-page blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers.
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The FBI did not respond to a CNN request for comment. The NSA told CNN said it will respond "as soon as we can."
The order does not say why the request was made, but it bans the government and Verizon from making the contents public.
"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 subscribers anywhere in the US," the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement released shortly after the story broke.