WASHINGTON: The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been authorized to continue its secret collection of phone records of all citizens of the country.
The announcement was made by the office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper which said that in response to a government request seeking renewal of the authority to collect telephony metadata in bulk, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court renewed that authority.
The court authorized the NSA to carry out surveillance activities for only limited periods of time and the government will have to submit new requests for re-authorization every several months.
The NSA can collect records, including phone numbers, call times and call durations, on all phone calls made in the US.
