The White House has defended the practice of recording the phone-calls of Americans without grounds. It comes after a confidential court order surfaced.

The order shows that the National Security Agency (NSA) is engaged in the wide scale recording of calls by Verizon customers. Issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), the leaked court order means that the telecom company Verizon must hand over all phone-call "metadata" for its customers calls.

This data includes the duration of the call, the numbers of both caller and recipient, location and other identifying details. The content of calls is not included.

In a press conference, the Obama administration defended the practice of collecting the phone data of citizens. It said it is a "critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats". The order was signed on April 25th and allows for comprehensive collection of phone-call details until July. It is allowed under the Patriot Act.

While a large scale project of phone-call surveillance of 3 major telecoms (Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth) by the NSA occurred in 2001 under then-President George W. Bush, this is the first such project revealed to have happened during the presidency of Barack Obama. The American civil rights body - ACLU - has called for the government to end the programme which it described as "beyond Orwellian".

Former US Vice President, Al Gore tweeted on the issue:

In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous? ow.ly/lKS13

— Al Gore (@algore) June 6, 2013

Verizon is one of the largest telecoms companies in the US with millions of customers however it remains unknown whether other such companies are engaged in handing over customer data.