According to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, aka the “business records” provision, the government was authorized to obtain orders from the FISA Court that compelled third parties to produce “any tangible thing” that was “relevant” to foreign intelligence or terrorism investigations. But as the court order I found made clear, the NSA had secretly interpreted this authorization as a license to collect all of the “business records,” or metadata, of telephone communications coming through American telecoms, such as Verizon and AT&T, on “an ongoing daily basis.” This included, of course, records of
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