United States authorized three more months of espionage

The United States have renewed, for three months, the authorization to the National Security Agency (NSA), through a secret court, to collect metadata of telephone communications of millions of citizens, according to the National Intelligence Directorate, which was made public for the first time.

The program was leaked to the press in last June by the fugitive NSA former contractor, Edward Snowden.

The British newspaper The Guardian published an ordinance from that secret court, which forced the U.S. operator Verizon to deliver every day for three months to the NSA, all the phone metadata phone (number dialed, call duration) of their subscribers.

“In light of the continued interest of the population over the program of telephone metadata harvesting, the DNI (Director of National Intelligence, which controls the NSA, NDLR) decided to declassify and make public” the renewal of the permission given by the court to the NSA, said the Directorate of Intelligence.

Following revelations of Snowden, the program has come under heavy criticism from parliamentarians and civil society sectors.

National Security Agency (NSA)