1. What Verizon Shares with the NSA: The court order requires Verizon to provide both the ingoing and outgoing telephone numbers of a given call, unique identifiers of individual phones, the time of the call and its duration. Subscribers’ names, addresses and contact information are not revealed. Calls and texts are also not monitored under the order.
2. Collecting Massive Amounts of Cell Phone Data is Legal, For Now: According to the court, information like phone numbers and call duration is considered “metadata” and can therefore be acquired by government agencies without individual warrants. The court order was signed by Roger Vinson, a federal judge in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and a U.S. District Court judge in northern Florida.
3. But Telling Americans That Their Data is Being Collected Isn’t Legal: The order specifically forbids Verizon from informing customers (or anyone else) that their data is being collected, stating “no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or the NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order.”
See the full list at Time.







