The U.S. National Security Agency has been allowed by a court order to collect phone records of a large number of customers of Verizon, according to a report in the Guardian on Thursday. The April 25 order from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C., requires Verizon to produce call records or "telephony metadata" on an ongoing daily basis, according to the British newspaper, which published what it said was a copy of the order.