US secretly collecting records of Verizon calls

The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance programme under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act,according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.

The order,signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April,directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary,Verizon Business Network Services,to turn over on an ongoing daily basis to the National Security Agency all call logs between the US and abroad or wholly within the United States,including local telephone calls.

The order does not apply to the content of the communications.

Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nations largest telecommunications and Internet providers for corporations. It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon,or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence,and representatives of both Verizon and ATamp;T declined to comment.

The four-page order was disclosed Wednesday evening by the newspaper The Guardian.