By Jaime Ortega.
The U.S. government accessed in late April the call logs of all Verizon customers: One of the largest telephone companies in the country. This was unveiled on Thursday by the British newspaper ‘The Guardian’, which has obtained a court order authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) for indiscriminately accessing the data of millions of people.
The court order was signed by Judge Roger Vinson and expires on July 19. But the authorities can apply to extend their terms beyond that date. The court order against the NSA does not offer the possibility to listen to the conversations of all Verizon customers. But it lets you know the two numbers involved in any call from any phone company, the place and time in which the call has been made and what is its duration.
The order requires the company to deliver phone call information of all customers and what they did inside and outside the country. One end shows that Barack Obama has kept the indiscriminate spying program launched by his predecessor George W. Bush after the attacks of September 11th.
Judge Vinson is a member of a secret court that issued warrants at the request of the authorities. But until now the target of the orders used to investigate a person or a specific group for a very specific time remain classified. No access to the record of all customers of a company like Verizon have been shared thus far.
Neither the White House nor the Justice Department and the National Security Agency offered an explanation Thursday of the reasons behind the wiretapping. Neither the phone company, which is has been prohibited to provide any details to the court order has provided an explanation.
Experts warned that the data allows the accurate portrayal that the NSA builded a network of contacts for each client to haunt specific targets. Opponents warn that the government while spying could have obtained permits to access the customers of other companies and remembered that it is impossible to know if it is the first time that Verizon is been forced to comply with the court order.
The order received by Verizon explains the interventions of Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Udall Mak, who warned for months that the public would get angered if they knew how much the government spies on its citizens.
Both Wyden and Udall are members of the Senate intelligence committee and can not provide details of activities that the government has classified as confidential. One end has led them to launch generic warnings to report a program that is considered as an abuse of power and privacy.
It is not the first time the press uncovers a program that spies on its citizens. Similarly back in 2006, ‘USA Today’ revealed that the NSA had collected data from millions of customers of companies like AT & T, Verizon and BellSouth in order to “detect terrorism”. But until now there was no concrete evidence that the Obama administration had acted in a similar way.
