Washington: The National Security Agency (NSA) has developed a surveillance system that can record 100 per cent of a foreign country’s telephone calls, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The system allows the agency to review conversations up to a month after they take place, the Post said. It quoted people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. The newspaper said that, at the request of US officials, it would not reveal details that could be used to identify the country where the system is currently being used or other countries where its use is envisioned.
The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009, the Post said.
Its “retrospective retr-ieval” tool and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere, the Post said.
In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording “every single” conversation nationwide, storing billions in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary the Post reported.
