Background
On June 5th, 2013, The Guardian published an exclusive report that the U.S. National Security Agency is collecting the telephone records of millions of customers of Verizon, the largest U.S. telecoms provider in the country. The article detailed a classified order from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was obtained by the UK newspaper and made publicly available on its website, directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to hand over all “telephony metadata” created by the mobile service provider within the United States and abroad.
External References
[1]The Guardian – NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
[2]The Guardian – Verizon forced to hand over telephone data – full court ruling