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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."
.. what will the Bahama government/people do - will they sue the US for the presumable crime of breaking into their phone system?
Had they done this with Cayman Islands they could have possible nabbed some real criminals, and probably made the world a better/safer place.
Surely there is a branch of al-quaeda there to have that kind of surveillance. When they will start to send the killer drones?
"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.
Oh no, can't have them monitor the Cayman islands...they would net about 90% of our congress, senate and 3/4 of the power brokers in DC...can't have that ya know ;)
Anyone at NSA who is participating in this is committing an act of war against a sovereign nation without any declaration of war.
Under what theory of international law? This behavior is clearly bad and is the sort of thing a country has a right to be pissed off about, but there's no coherent, conventional theory that makes this an act of war. The situation is bad enough without exaggerating.
Except that getting caught at it is a major embarrassment and is going to destroy the relationships with Bahamas and most likely erode even further that of other countries. And given the breach of trust involved in this specific instance, is going to have a negative effect in the war against terror and drug cooperation. Not to mention that indiscriminate eavesdropping in an entire population is both overkill an unnecessary for gathering relevant intelligence of any kind.
It is a serious question. I'm beginning to think that collectively the NSA (and CIA too for that matter) is just ... dumb. At best, a bunch of careerists milking the govt gravy train.
Unlike all their activities... the good they're doing is top secret!
Anyone at NSA who is participating in this is committing an act of war against a sovereign nation without any declaration of war.
-jcr
Slow down cowboy and holster that side arm... The Article is a bit conflicting on this.. It says EVERY cell call, *then* it clarifies that it's only international calls, which is certainly NOT every cell call. So, this might not be what you suspect and before you start a shooting war we need to think about this.
Seems this is NOT an act of war, it's simply monitoring traffic coming over international trunks and that they simply have the ability to intercept the signaling, and both sides of the conversation. This requires no *in country* equipment or invasion of territory to do. This is NOT new information, we've know about this for years, even before Snowden did his document dump. Now if they set this tap up IN the Bahamas, you *might* have an argument, but I don't think that's what happened here.
Now, if they really are monitoring ALL cell calls, then it would be necessary to have assets in country and you MIGHT have your "act of war" but then again, you might not. At any rate, even if the NSA invaded the Bahamas to do this, I seriously doubt they'd be incensed enough to do much more than protest. What you going to do? Throw out all the rich American tourists or start a shooting war and watch them run? I don't think so.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Right and there was not american to american phone calls from the Bahamas.
This doesn't matter, or so the courts say. You step off sovereign US territory and the legal assumption that you are a US citizen no longer applies. So, where they cannot TARGET you knowing you are a citizen (without a warrant), they can intercept your phone calls in their quest for intelligence information when you are on foreign soil. The rules are literally different OUTSIDE the country, and you need to get used to that because it's been this way for decades.
What's changed though is the *sharing* of intelligence information gathered by the NSA with law enforcement.... But that's not what this article is about..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'm still much less troubled about NSA surveillance than about what what a forced sale of the clippers means for privacy. And what Brendan Eich's ousting means for free speech. I wish Hitchens were still alive, just to see what his take would be on the current trend of popular suppression.
It is certainly legal, and proper for popular opinion to move against unpopular ideas in the private arena, so long as government holds itself apart from this censure... but it does not feel good. it does not feel right.
The NSA can wire-tap the crap out of me, because I don't think they'd do something so capricious as out me to the public. And the public doesn't work through proper channels. Judge, jury, executioner through mob rule.
Orwell would weep, punishing people for what they think.
Based on the number of proportional font memos with a blacked out second country name, it shouldn't be too hard to narrow down the other country (in addition to the Bahamas) for which "full retrieval" was possible.
I mean, it's not Laos, and it's not Nagorno-Karabakh, but with a known font, you could narrow it down pretty quickly based on the redacted images.
Here:
https://prod01-cdn00.cdn.first...
And here:
https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.first...
Everyone who's anyone is using electronic eavesdropping to supplement their Country's intelligence agenda.
If the United States took the high ground and refused to engage this, it would be to the detriment of the West, likely including the Country you've posted from.
This technology is already out there for everyone to exploit.... Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get back in.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It says EVERY cell call, *then* it clarifies that it's only international calls, which is certainly NOT every cell call. So, this might not be what you suspect and before you start a shooting war we need to think about this.
Seems this is NOT an act of war, it's simply monitoring traffic coming over international trunks and that they simply have the ability to intercept the signaling, and both sides of the conversation. This requires no *in country* equipment or invasion of territory to do. This is NOT new information, we've know about this for years, even before Snowden did his document dump. Now if they set this tap up IN the Bahamas, you *might* have an argument, but I don't think that's what happened here.
Did you even read the article? It clearly says that they are intercepting every cell call in the Bahamas and that it was based on exploiting legal access arranged with the Bahamas police for a specific case in order to install a blanket tap of all calls. If it was about tapping international cables, why would it only be picking up cell phones? The article also discusses broader programs which involve more countries and in many of those the scope of interception is more limited, but in the Bahamas it is everything - not just stuff that passes over international trunks.
When U.S. drug agents need to tap a phone of a suspected drug kingpin in another country, they call up their counterparts and ask them set up an intercept. To facilitate those taps, many nations – including the Bahamas – have hired contractors who install and maintain so-called lawful intercept equipment on their telecommunications. With SOMALGET, it appears that the NSA has used the access those contractors developed to secretly mine the country’s entire phone system for “signals intelligence” –recording every mobile call in the country. “Host countries,” the document notes, “are not aware of NSA’s SIGINT collection.”
In the Bahamas, the documents say, the NSA intercepts GSM data that is transmitted over what is known as the “A link”–or “A interface”–a core component of many mobile networks. The A link transfers data between two crucial parts of GSM networks – the base station subsystem, where phones in the field communicate with cell towers, and the network subsystem, which routes calls and text messages to the appropriate destination. “It’s where all of the telephone traffic goes,” says the former engineer.
As if a country like the Bahamas can do anything like that. The US is the only country they could hook into for internet infrastructure without running a cable to South America or Mexico.
The US also flies unmarked helos in Bahamas airspace - the DEA would do low level flights up and down the island of Eleuthera looking for crops and attempting to follow drug mules. The mules would drop the drugs off on the south end of the island, transfer from boat to a truck, drive up to the north end of the island and dump them on another boat to get around satellite surveillance. It's scary seeing an unmarked Apache 30 feet off the deck fly over as you're laying on the beach.
All the major players do it, and all the major players know the other Countries do it.
Hell, Enemy of the State is a 1998 movie and the tinfoil hatters have been right about this one for years.
Since the time of Kings, he who spies best, has the attention of the rest.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The problem is in some parts of the world is the domestic cost of telco interconnects. It can be cheaper to connect domestic calls via an international peering loop that goes way out past a few other nations and their shared facilities. Kind of hard to re build a decades of contracts and local hardware thats all about reducing costs.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Try and think of what "intercepting data off a network" is really about into todays digitally connected world.
Thats every private call, legal documents as a fax or junk crypto, every electronic court document, banking records protected with international junk crypto, local contracts been discussed between gov departments before been offered, international contracts been discussed between gov departments, the expensive needs of education, science wrt to costly upgrades, mil and police needs, health, energy policy, food exports, trade with other nations.... Any nation thats opened itself up to that kind of constant "intercepting" is really sinking into colony status with every act, law, deal, contract been seen and fully understood by a few other nations (5++ other nations).
International tenders become a costly joke with a full understanding of the gov position, needs and price range.
A digital banana republic, as Argentina had the the English Octopus over rail. Once another nation is in your domestic infrastructure they get to understand and shape policy.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The Bahamas already knew about it?
How else did the DEA have access?
During Vietnam their skilled teams did try and save a lot of US lives by predicting and tracking the enemy.
They also tried to help with complex flight paths around layers SAM.
They did great work tracking Soviet weapons tests and digging under embassy foundations to get near telco equipment.
re "milking the govt gravy train", think of it as a leadership table and a set number can vote.
You want to be at the table voting and setting policy with the budget that reflects that role.
You do not want to be called in for tech support and then sent out of the room as in decades past.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
maybe you're just an idiot or a shill.
That's where the smart money is betting. NSA has a number of minions tasked with bad-mouthing the man who exposed their billions of felony wiretapping crimes. There are also a few knee-jerk bootlickers who will do likewise.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I love how your response is "what will THOSE people do" not "what will WE do", like the NSA is significantly more careful with our rights, or like us and them are separate groups. Obviously military intelligence is completely out of control and doing whatever they have the means to regardless of morality or law. I guess people like you are waiting for some kind of referendum to vote against NSA power. IT'S NOT COMING. The people we've allowed the wrong people to make decisions for us. If one doesn't see that, one is blind, and an obstruction that must be removed immediately. Do you think they're going to serve you the option to take their power away on some kind of platter crafted of precious metals? Do you think it's possible to make big enough waves from the bottom of the power structure up to make a change in the government's behavior?
Time for revolution.
Anyone at NSA who is participating in this is committing an act of war against a sovereign nation without any declaration of war.
-jcr
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the united states does that like every other week. Noticed Ukraine lately? We started that. Everyone seems to forget there was a fucking US backed coup before Russia stepped in. It's not like they randomly decided to invade.
Those who are evil cannot comprehend the actions of those who are not.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Espionage is not an attack.
The IETF would disagree with you
First off, the incident took place prior to 2007 when the Army was supplying the many of aircraft for the DEA to use in the operations there. Prior to 2007 the DEA only had 3 Jayhawks and 1 other helicopter for it's OPBAT operations, everything else was supplied by the Army.
This is the helicopter I saw: http://www.forthoodsentinel.co... - in this configuration. Armaments were not equipped though. It's rather hard to mistake the thin/relatively small profile of an Apache compared to the Blackhawks.
As to the nature of the mission, I cannot say exactly what they were doing that day, all I know is that they were flying below the tree line directly over the beach, facing in-land and strafing north. For all I know they were cruising for boobs. I suspect though, knowing the local geography/topography, that because of the density of the forest/jungle they were trying to see under the canopy as much as possible to identify grow ops that were not visible via satellite. This would be particularly effective in Eleuthera because the island is one long strip for the most part with very little change in elevation. Between the density of the bush and the number of poison wood trees, grows would likely need to be near a road - in the area where I was when I saw it there is only 1 road, right near the beach for about a 30km stretch http://goo.gl/maps/FSM9G
There are a mess of cables in the area, http://www.submarinecablemap.c... and I suppose they could but by "right by the bahamas" you're actually talking 1,000-2,000km of cable (depending on whether you went to Jamaica or directly to Caracas). The Bahamas largest project is around 3,500km which hooks up 20 islands and Haiti. Adding an extra 1/3rd to the length/cost just to avoid the US? Political/tourist implications aside, from a financial perspective it doesn't make sense. You have to remember that outside of Nassau/Freeport it's very much a 3rd world country - last I was there the entire island would lose power at least once every couple weeks.