NSA Also Mining Data From Sprint, AT&T, Credit Card Companies

Yesterday's revelation that Verizon had received a secret court order to hand over data to the National Security Agency was just the beginning. Two other major American wireless providers, AT&T and Sprint, have also been receiving similar orders, as have credit card companies.

Sources familiar with the NSA's practices confirmed this latest round of revelations to the Wall Street Journal late on Thursday.

The report came just a couple of hours after the Guardian and the Washington Post dropped their bombshell: using a secret program called PRISM, Internet giants incluing Facebook, Google, or Microsoft allegedly let the NSA and the FBI tap into their user's communications — perhaps in real time.

This confirms what privacy experts had been warning of after the first revelation of the court order received by Verizon: that it was a standard, ongoing, recurring practice with other companies. The Journal's sources confirmed that the orders are similar in scope to the Verizon one — they give the NSA access to the metadata of every phone call every American makes.

The NSA also gets access to customer's purchase information from credit card companies, although no specific details of this particular data collection practice have been divulged so far.

Meanwhile, the White House defended the wide-ranging surveillance program. Deputy press secretary Josh Earnest called it "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats."

Democratic senators backed the program and tried to give reassurances to the American public. "Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn't anything that is brand new,'" said Sen. Harry Reid (D.-Nev.).

After claiming that the NSA surveillance program is about "protecting America," Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) added that the program is legal and is under constant Congressional oversight; it needs to be renewed every three months.

Meanwhile James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, issued an online statement. Intelligence agencies have to work within the constraints of the law "to collect, analyze and understand information related to potential threats to our national security," he said.

Clapper went on to decry the leak of top secret documents and sensitive information like the court order revealed by the Guardian.

"The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation," he said.

The DNI director said the program does not allow the NSA to collect content; "just metadata." But as the Guardian's James Ball pointed out, metadata can be just as revealing — and can identify you as clearly — as content.

The broad scope of the order was necessary, Clapper said, because "more narrow collection would limit our ability to screen for and identify terrorism-related communications."

Meanwhile, the Internet giants that allegedly allowed the NSA to tap into their user's communications denied any direct involvement in the PRISM program.

Image: NSA via Getty Images