US apex court rejects plea to stop NSA 'snoop-op' on Verizon customers

The United States Supreme Court has rejected a petition from a privacy group that sought to stop the National Security Agency (NSA) from collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon customers.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) had filed a plea directly into the apex court, bypassing lower courts, for review of a decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

The group blamed FISC for exceeding its statutory jurisdiction by ordering production of millions of domestic telephone records that could not have been relevant to any authorized investigation, Stuff.co.nz reports.

Meanwhile, the government argued that only the government and the recipient of the FISC order had standing to appeal the ruling.