Former president George W Bush authorised the NSA after the 9/11 attacks to implement a bulk collection of US telephone, internet and email records. The practice proved controversial.
In 2006, USA Today reported that the NSA had been “secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth”.
It had been “using the data to analyse calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity”, the paper reported.
Until now, there had been no indication that the Obama administration had continued the programme.
Article Appeared @http://news.sky.com/story/1100095/verizon-phone-records-monitored-by-us-govt