Edward Snowden is apparently not done with his revelations about the US National Security Agency. On Tuesday, the Washington Post published a series of documents purportedly coming from the former government contractor which detailed how the federal agency monitored all phone calls of an unnamed country in 30 days for instant replay, ZDNet said in its report.
According to Snowden's latest batch of documents, the NSA used a voice interception program dubbed MYSTIC beginning 2009. The documents, said the Post, also said that the NSA's retrospective retrieval tool, or RETRO, and related projects had reached full capacity against its first target nation back in 2011.
ZDNet said in its report that MYSTIC and RETRO allows the NSA to record billions of calls within the period and recall a particular call for an analysts' review. The Snowden's documents revealed that a minimum of five countries had been under surveillance using the MYSTIC program, with a sixth one targeted to be monitored in October this year. It has also been known that several US intelligence agencies had access to the surveillance program.
The publication of Snowden's documents had the Post withholding some details at the request of the US government officials, ZDNet said.
National Security Council Caitlin Hayden was quoted by the Post in a statement, who 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." Hayden declined to comment about Snowden's latest revelations.
ZDNet also said that the latest revelations had contradicted US President Barack Obama's earlier statements, who assured the public that the government does not spy on ordinary people nor that NSA has not abused the law to monitor ordinary people's communications.
