MOSCOW, June 28 (RAPSI) - A US telecommunications provider has filed a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to officially publish an order allowing it to monitor personal data, already revealed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, RIA Novosti reported on Friday.
The request was dated June 14, but does not contain the company's name. It states that the decision was made after the National Security Agency partly declassified its surveillance programs. This was done after the media published the classified order provided to them by Snowden.
The Guardian reported earlier that it had a secret court order requiring the US telecommunications company Verizon to provide data from millions of customers to the US authorities for three months. The Washington Post reported about an Internet-scouring program code-named PRISM that allowed the NSA and the FBI to tap into nine US Internet companies and to gather all information from users, including videos, emails, searches and pictures.
Snowden has dominated international headlines this month after claiming responsibility for leaking top-secret documents to The Guardian, detailing the National Security Agency's (NSA) capacity to access the systems of major US companies such as Google, Facebook, and Apple. Google, Facebook, and Apple have all denied providing direct or backdoor access to their servers.
After the initial leak, Snowden went on to expose various other types of intelligence, including claims to The Guardian that the NSA had intercepted communications from Medvedev's delegation during the 2009 G20 summit in London, as well as claims during an interview with the South China Morning Post that the United States had been hacking into Chinese computers for years.
On June 14, the US authorities filed a criminal complaint advancing three charges, each carrying a punishment of up to 10 years in prison. He has been charged with the theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person, according to a criminal complaint filed by federal prosecutors.