The announcement was unusual, but buried in the Friday night data dump, which is actually pretty thin because of the shutdown.
TheHill.com reports, here:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has granted the National Security Agency (NSA) permission to continue its collection of records on all U.S. phone calls.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced the court's approval in a statement late Friday. The court authorizes the program for only limited time periods and requires that the government submit new requests every several months for re-authorization.
The existence of the bulk phone data collection was one of the most controversial revelations from the leaks by Edward Snowden.
