[March 19, 2014]WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S.
National Security Agency has created a surveillance system that is
recording all the phone calls in an undisclosed foreign country,
allowing it to play back any conversation up to 30 days later, the
Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The newspaper cited unnamed sources with direct knowledge of the
system as well as documents supplied by former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden, who since last year has leaked extensive data revealing
sweeping American spying activities.
The newspaper said that at the request of U.S. officials, it was
withholding details that could be used to identify the nation where
the system is being used or others where it might be used in the
future. The Post cited documents that envisioned similar U.S. spying
operations in other nations.
The voice interception program is known as MYSTIC and started in
2009, with its "retrospective retrieval" capability, called RETRO,
reaching full strength in 2011 against the first target nation, the
Post reported.
A classified summary of the system said the collection effort was
recording "every single" conversation nationwide in the first target
country, storing billions of conversations in a 30-day rolling
buffer that clears out the oldest calls as new ones are made, the
Post reported.
A senior manager for the program likened it to a time machine that
can replay voices from any phone call without the need to identify a
person for spying in advance, the newspaper reported.
The Post said that no other disclosed NSA program captures a
nation's telephone network in its entirety.
Current and former U.S. officials quoted anonymously by the Post
said large numbers of conversations involving Americans would be
gathered using the system.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, at his regular news briefing on
Tuesday, sidestepped a question about the Post article, saying that
"we don't, as a general rule, comment on every specific allegation
or report."
"We make clear what activity the NSA and ... our intelligence
community engages in, and the fact that they are bound by our laws
and the oversight of three branches of government," Carney told
reporters.
Carney also noted that President Barack Obama announced a series of
steps in January to "significantly reform our activity.
Obama on January 17 began reining in the vast collection of
Americans' phone data and banned U.S. eavesdropping on the leaders
of close allies in a series of limited reforms triggered by the
revelations from numerous documents leaked by Snowden.
Civil liberties activists condemned the MYSTIC program.
"This is a truly chilling revelation, and it's one that underscores
how high the stakes are in the debate we're now having about bulk
surveillance. The NSA has always wanted to record everything, and
now it has the capacity to do so," Jameel Jaffer, an official with
the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
In a statement published by the Post, White House National Security
Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden refused to comment on "specific
alleged intelligence activities."
But Hayden said "new or emerging threats" are "often hidden within
the large and complex system of modern global communications, and
the United States must consequently collect signals intelligence in
bulk in certain circumstances in order to identify these threats,"
the Post reported.
NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines told the Post that "continuous and
selective reporting of specific techniques and tools used for
legitimate U.S. foreign intelligence activities is highly
detrimental to the national security of the United States and of our
allies, and places at risk those we are sworn to protect."
Snowden last year fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia, where he has
asylum. The United States wants him returned to face criminal
prosecution.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; editing by Richard Chang and Marguerita
Choy)
The newspaper cited unnamed sources with direct knowledge of the
system as well as documents supplied by former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden, who since last year has leaked extensive data revealing
sweeping American spying activities.
