By Sean Buckley

The National Security Agency’s phone and data collection effort targeting Verizon (NYSE: VZ) also included AT&T (NYSE: T) and Sprint (NYSE: S), according to various reports.

While Verizon was initially the only provider named by The Guardian that was asked to give information to the NSA, AT&T and Sprint also cooperated during the seven-year-old program to collect telephone “meta data”– including the number called, the time of the call and the length of the conversation–according to reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter. None of the service providers would comment if they received court orders from the government.

Verizon Business was asked to give the NSA information on all telephone calls made on its systems, including those within the United States and between the U.S. and other countries.

T-Mobile USA and CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) would not say if they had received court orders to turn over such data, the New York Times reported.

Two separate reports by the Washington Post and the Guardian revealed that the NSA also runs a program called “PRISM,” which allows the NSA to access Internet-based audio and video chats, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs to track potential terrorist threats.

Read more: AT&T, Sprint also part of NSA’s phone data collection probe – FierceTelecom

***You should’ve known that Verizon WAS NOT the only carrier turning over call data. ~ SB***