NSA in the Bahamas: 'Data Pirates of the Caribbean'

According to new NSA revelations at the The Intercept on Monday—reported by Ryan Devereaux, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras—the U.S. National Security Agency “is secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation on the island nation of the Bahamas.”

Based on documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the surveillance program in the Caribbean nation, known as much in the U.S. as home for off-shore banking and shell corporations as for its luxurious resorts, “is part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET” which has been executed without the knowledge of the Bahamian government.

The Intercept—whose reporting indicates the program is ongoing—explains how the NSA, “in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,” has been able “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.”

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Part of a previously disclosed surveillance program called MYSTIC—which was revealed to be operative in Mexico, Kenya, and The Philippines—SOMALGET has been deployed in the Bahamas and at least one other nation. Due to “specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence” in that country if revealed, however, The Intercept decided to withhold that information.

Describing the nature of the programs, The Intercept explains:

Following publication of the story, Greenwald highlighted important elements of the revelations by tweeting:

According to The Intercept: