Those crazy American conspiracy theorists who live up trees with guns and drink their own pee don’t seem quite so crazy anymore.

Verizon scandal: Barack Obama's national security state is now beyond democratic control

It turns out that a “secret court order” has empowered the US government to collect the phone records of millions of users of Verizon, one of the most popular telephone providers – a massive domestic surveillance programme and a shocking intrusion into the lives of others.

For the first time in history, being an AT&T customer doesn’t seem such a bad thing after all.Of course, it isn't the first time that a US administration has spied on its own people. The origins of this particular order lie first in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and then in Section 215 of the Patriot Act, backed by George W Bush and passed by Congress after 9/11. Normally, domestic surveillance only targets suspicious individuals, not the entire population, but in 2006 it was discovered that a similarly wide database of cellular records was being collected from customers of Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth
Verizon scandal: Barack Obama's national security state is now beyond democratic control – Telegraph Blogs