Leak of NSA order against Verizon could cause irreversible harm to national security, says top intelligence officer

Daily Mail
"At issue is a court order, first disclosed Wednesday by The Guardian newspaper in Britain, that requires the communications company Verizon to turn over on an 'ongoing, daily basis' the records of its customers' calls. Separately, The Washington Post and The Guardian reported Thursday the existence of another program used by the NSA and FBI that scours the nation's main Internet companies, extracting audio, video, emails and other information. .......When the first revelation in the case came out Wednesday night about the order against Verizon, The American Civil Liberties Union put out an immediate statement calling for an end to the program - which is scheduled to run until July 19 - and a investigation into the order. 'From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming,' ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. 'It’s a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents. 'It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies.'