As the New Yorker's Amy Davidson summed it up: "The government seems to have a list of all the people that Verizon customers called and who called them; how long they spoke; and, perhaps -- depending on how precise the cell-phone-tower information in the metadata is, where they were on a given day."

So how do we know about all this?

Glenn Greenwald, a columnist at The Guardian, seems to have received a leaked copy of the order. He posted the document, and an article about it, last night.

The order, now that I look at it, is dated April 25 -- which is just 10 days after the Boston bombings. Could there be any connection there?

Unlikely. In fact, very unlikely. The order is one piece of evidence for a surveillance program that seems to have been ongoing since 2006. It's a program that, from what we know so far, is renewed every 90 days. As Senator Diane Feinstein said of the document, "As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years."

Who in the government might have access to the metadata being gathered?

The order itself directs that the records be provided to the NSA. Then again, there seems to be nothing in the document that would explicitly prohibit the NSA from sharing the data with other agencies. There's also nothing in the order specifying limitations on who can access the data within the NSA itself.

Basically, the government is binge-watching Americans. -- pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) June 6, 2013

What has the government, as far as we know, been doing with the metadata it's gathered?

Very generally, it seems that the information is being put to use in the name of counter-terrorism. (As Feinstein put it: "It's called protecting America.")

In terms of the specifics, though, we don't precisely know how the metadata is being employed. At least in theory, that kind of information is mostly useful for identitying associations and networks of people who may be engaged in criminal activities.

How is the Obama Administration explaining and trying to justify all this?

This way, according to talking points sent to Marc Ambinder:

* On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the Government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls. The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call. * Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States. * As we have publicly stated before, all three branches of government are involved in reviewing and authorizing intelligence collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress passed that act and is regularly and fully briefed on how it is used, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizes such collection.

So this would seem to be a continuation of Bush-era surveillance policies.