NSA Program Captures, Replays Phone Calls

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

The NSA’s MYSTIC program, created in 2009, deploys a “retrospective retrieval” (RETRO) tool which allows agents to rewind and playback all phone conversations that have taken place in the past thirty days in an unnamed foreign country, according to Edward Snowden-leaked documents published by the Washington Post.

One U.S. official described the technology as a “time machine” which opens a door “into the past,” allowing a replay of all phone conversation, without the need for prior identification of the person on the line. The Post has not identified the country at the request of U.S. officials.

The MYSTIC program differs from other NSA surveillance programs revealed by Snowden because it captures the content of phone conversations, not just calls’ metadata — phone numbers, call times, and call durations. The program is the first known NSA operation to record an entire nation’s voice communication network.

The NSA responded to the released documents in a statement to National Journal, claiming the agency “does not conduct signals intelligence collection in any country, or anywhere in the world, unless it is necessary to advance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.”

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

According to HLS News Wire in the 2011 initial deployment of the program where the RETRO tool was used on a country, telephone conversations were recorded and stored in a 30-day cycle that clears the oldest calls when new ones arrived. Analysts listen to less than 1 percent of the calls, but according to the Post, the absolute numbers are high— each month, millions of voice clippings are processed for storage.

On why the NSA needs to capture bulk communication data instead of targeting individuals and groups, Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council 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.”

Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said that “over the next couple of years they (MYSTIC and RETRO tool) will expand to more countries, retain data longer and expand the secondary uses.” Based on the program’s internal documents, the RETRO tool could have been expanded to six more countries. Conversations of American citizens in the targeted country are not exempt from surveillance, since the NSA does not filter out the calls, but defines them as “acquired incidentally as a result of collection directed against appropriate foreign intelligence targets.”