The NSA Is Recording Every Cell Phone Call In the Bahamas

Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes "The National Security Agency is secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation on the island nation of the Bahamas. According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the surveillance is part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET – that was implemented without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government. Instead, the agency appears to have used access legally obtained in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open a backdoor to the country's cellular telephone network, enabling it to covertly record and store the 'full-take audio' of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas – and to replay those calls for up to a month."

Comments

Cayman Islands?

[rogoshen1]

Had they done this with Cayman Islands they could have possible nabbed some real criminals, and probably made the world a better/safer place.

Favoritism.

[Forbo]

"The U.S. Department of Treasury estimated that in 2011 the Caribbean Banking Centers, which include Bahamas ...held almost $2 trillion dollars in United States debt." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I bet there were some pretty juicy tidbits swept up in that massive dragnet. I certainly believe that tax evaders are a lot more of an actual threat to the US than the terrorism "boogeyman". So where are our prosecutions on this crap?

The answer is that there never will be. All this mass-surveillance will never actually be used to our benefit, only as a means enforcing the status quo for the powers that be.