US defends ‘Orwellian’ spying on phone data

The US government has admitted that a top spy agency was using a “crucial tool” against terrorism by sweeping up domestic telephone records, but new revelations on the practice sparked a swift backlash.

One civil liberties group branded the practice, authorised by a top secret court order, as “beyond Orwellian” while others argued the idea of a massive dragnet encompassing tens of millions of phone records was unconstitutional.

The programme, which began under the Bush administration, apparently does not monitor the content of phone calls or who is making them, but provides “metadata” on phone numbers used and call duration.