As a result of the first round of leaks by former U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, we know that Verizon is subject to a secret U.S. court order, in which the telecoms giant must hand over every shred of data it has to the U.S. government for its mass surveillance efforts.
The telco knows it. The U.S. government knows it. And we dare I say “thanks” to Snowden, now know it too.
Because the order was so broad and encompassed almost every shred of Verizon customer data, we can all but assume that other major telecom companies are under similar orders. It ties in with the NSA’s “Upstream” program, which ZDNet’s investigative work detailed between the second and third major rounds of leaks.
We can assume, but we may never know for sure.
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