A classified order recently released by the Guardian newspaper reveals that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting metadata from phone calls made by Verizon subscribers "on an ongoing daily basis", and senior members of the Senate Intelligence Committee state that mass collection of these records has been going on for seven years. It is almost certain that similar orders exist for other carriers.
Although technically "legal" under the PATRIOT act and related legislation, this activity violates citizens' Fourth Amendment rights to protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Please cease to collect these records and come clean about the extent of the administration's monitoring of ordinary, innocent americans.