‘NSA was able to listen back to foreign telephone conversations’

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Within a given country, the NSA can tap 100 percent of all telephone conversations and listen back to them for up to a month. This is according to sources from an American newspaper and documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

It is not known in which country one hundred percent of telephone conversations are tapped and can be listened to for a month: The Washington Post knows this, but has been asked by the White House not to write it down. The newspaper does report that the system may have been expanded to five other countries, and that it will be rolled out to a sixth country in October. This would appear from the internal budget of the Ministry of Defense.

The system would keep conversations for thirty days and would be in use since 2011. It is not clear exactly how many calls are actually listened back: the NSA is said to listen back less than one percent of the telephone conversations. Despite this, many telephone conversations are selected to be stored for a longer period of time: according to the newspaper, millions of audio clips are involved. Not only the NSA would have access to the conversations, but also other US government services. The Washington Post says it obtained the information from its own sources and documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

NSA officials would not need a wiretap to listen back to conversations. US government officials call the spy program “valuable in protecting the United States and its allies.” Earlier, President Obama said the United States “does not spy on ordinary people who pose no threat to national security”; the new revelations seem to run counter to that.

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