[An Nahar] The U.S. government Thursday said a top spy agency was using a "crucial tool" against terrorism by sweeping up domestic telephone records, but new revelations on the program sparked a swift backlash.
One civil liberties group branded the practice, authorized by a top secret court order, as "beyond Orwellian" while others argued the idea of a massive dragnet encompassing tens of millions of phone records was unconstitutional.
The program, which began under the Bush administration, apparently does not monitor the content of telephone calls or who is making them, but provides "metadata" on phone numbers used and the duration of calls.
Advocates say the data, collected on calls inside and outside the United States, can then be crunched to show odd patterns of communication which can tip off spy agencies to possible planning for terror attacks.
Senior U.S. officials, while not confirming reports in the Guardian newspaper that service provider Verizon had been ordered to turn over reams of data, defended the National Security Agency (NSA), the secret listening service.
"Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States," said a senior U.S. official on condition of anonymity.
"It allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected faceless myrmidons have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States."
The official said that all three branches of the U.S. government, the White House, Congress, and the judicial system, were involved in reviewing and authorizing intelligence collection under current laws.
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