Phone companies remain silent over legality of NSA data
collection  Leading phone firms refuse to say why they have not
challenged Fisa court orders that compel them to hand over
customers' data   • Jump to comments () Verizon phone Verizon
was one of the companies that declined to answer Guardian
questions over the legality of the NSA data collection.
Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters  America's top telecommunications
companies are refusing to say whether they accept that the bulk
collection of their customers' phone records by the National
Security Agency is lawful.  The phone companies are continuing
to guard their silence over the controversial gathering of
metadata by the NSA, despite the increasingly open approach by
those at the center of the bulk surveillance programme. On
Tuesday the secretive foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa)
court declassified its legal reasoning for approving the NSA
telephone metadata program periodically over the past six years.
Verizon, the telecoms giant that was revealed