Secret Verizon records collection: What is NSA looking for?

It's possible that the National Security Agency's collection of Verizon records is related to a cybersecurity probe. Or, it could be related to the Boston Marathon bombing investigation.

By Peter Grier,?Staff writer / June 6, 2013

Pedestrians are reflected in the store window of a Verizon Wireless store near the New York Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan, Thursday, in New York. The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of all Verizon business customers under a top secret court order, according to government documents leaked to Britain?s Guardian newspaper.

John Minchillo/AP

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The Obama administration is secretly collecting all telephone records of Verizon business customers under a sweeping classified court order, according to government documents leaked to Britain?s Guardian newspaper.

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Washington Editor

Peter Grier is The Christian Science Monitor's Washington editor. In this capacity, he helps direct coverage for the paper on most news events in the nation's capital.

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This order may be just the tip of the US data-mining iceberg. Given the wide-ranging nature of the Verizon request, the US government probably has filed similar orders with AT&T and other communications firms, say national-security experts.

It?s important to note that this does not constitute wiretapping per se. The Federal Bureau of Investigation isn?t asking for the recorded contents of conversations. Instead, it is gathering phone number logs, call duration time, geographic location, and related communications ?metadata,? as allowed under a controversial section of the Patriot Act.

?On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the government to listen in on anyone?s telephone calls,? says an administration official quoted by the Associated Press.

But the indiscriminate nature of the request has startled many privacy experts and raises the question, why? What sort of investigation is the United States pursuing here?

?Was the motivation behind collecting these telephone records a current national-security threat? Or was it something like building a database ? to be able to pursue future threats?? asks NBC?s First Read blog Thursday morning.

One possible answer is that it?s related to a cybersecurity probe.

?My extremely [wild] guess is that this is part of a hacking investigation, possibly even the alleged Iranian hacking of power companies in the US,? writes national-security expert Marcy Wheeler on her Emptywheel blog.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ObD9hT513mw/Secret-Verizon-records-collection-What-is-NSA-looking-for

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