Verizon Was Ordered To Turn Over Millions of Americans' Phone Records To NSA

Conspiracy theorists across the country are probably giving each other high fives this evening. Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian has an incredible scoop: a court order from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court instructing Verizon to turn over metadata from all calls originating in the U.S. over a three-month period (ending July 19, 2013) to the National Security Agency (NSA) on a daily basis. A note on the order says it supposed to have remained classified until April 2038. It orders Verizon to turn over “all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”
It’s worth noting that Verizon has over 100 million subscribers.
Metadata includes “originating and terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, etc.), trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of call.” This doesn’t include the actual contents of the phone call; basically the NSA wants to be able to see which phones are calling which phones. The order also specifies that Verizon is not required to hand over the “name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer.” NSA would have to track down the identities associated with the numbers or the phone’s i.d. through a different database, or with another court order.
I am a Verizon customer. This means the NSA has a list of all the people I’ve communicated with in recent months and knows how long I talked to them (and could scold me for not calling my mother enough, were they to link the numbers to our identities).
Greenwald does not reveal how he got the order, but it seems unlikely that Verizon was the only phone company to be targeted with such an order. Via Greenwald in the Guardian:

The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration’s surveillance activities.
For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on “secret legal interpretations” to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be “stunned” to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.

I encourage you to read Greenwald’s report here. I’ve reached out to Verizon and the NSA for comment. Verizon declined comment, which is not surprising as the company is instructed in the order not to disclose that the order exists. A spokesperson for the NSA indicated that she would get back to me.
Update: In a letter to employees posted on the Verizon public policy blog, Verizon general counsel Randy Milch says the company “takes steps to safeguard its customers’ privacy” but is required to comply with the law. LINK