The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed permission to the U.S. government for a controversial program to collect telephone metadata in bulk. The order required Verizon to produce call records or telephony metadata on an ongoing daily basis until expiry of the authorization on July 19. Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have been demanding for greater transparency in the orders of the secret court. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in June in New York, claiming that the “mass call tracking” by the National Security Agency was in violation of the First Amendment.”]