Leaked Court Documents Reveal Verizon Providing the NSA Call Log Data in Bulk
The Guardian has leaked a court document reveals the National Security Agency (NSA) is currently collecting bulk call records from Verizon. The request, granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25th, extends until July 19th and mandates Verizon produce all call detail records on a daily basis to the NSA. So, what kind of call data is the NSA looking at? It appears that the Verizon is providing them the numbers of both parties to a call, how long it lasted, location data, and IMEI / IMSI numbers. The only thing the NSA doesn’t have their paws on is the actual content of the call or identifying information about the customer.
The report continues to detail that while security officials had requested bulk collection of call records previously, up until now it was not known to be occurring under the Obama administration. As some of you may recall, back in 2006 Verizon was one of the only carriers to claim that they had not handed over call records to the NSA. Oh, how times have changed.
What is still left unknown is whether this order is a one time event or one of numerous requests providing the NSA with an extensive collection of data unbeknownst to the consumer. At this time no other wireless carriers have been outed for doing the same.
