The Obama administration has been secretly collecting the phone records of its citizens since it took office, extending a Bush-era practice, with the knowledge of Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Civil libertarians condemned the practice as “deeply Orwellian”, but the White House said that its actions were necessary to protect the US from terrorist attacks.

The administration has been compelling Verizon Communications, and possibly other leading telecoms companies, to hand over the records of all telephone calls made “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls”. The practice was revealed by The Guardian newspaper, which published an order – signed by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – instructing Verizon to give the National Security Agency the metadata, or information logs, for the calls “on an ongoing daily basis”.