14 DAY TRIAL // The government officials in Bahamas must have been really confused to hear that the United States was collecting all phone calls going in, out and within the country.
Now, following the report that the NSA was snooping on phone calls of everyone moving through the country’s territories, Bahamian officials have contacted the US and plan to release a statement regarding the revelations.
Fred Mitchell, Bahamian minister of foreign affairs, has told the Nassau Guardian that the government has already asked for an explanation and that the cabinet was planning to meet to discuss the issue.
Of course, whether the Bahamians will receive anything more than a blank excuse it remains to be seen, but numerous nations have prompted the United States for comments following reports on its spying practices, and they didn’t really amount to much.
According to the report published by The Intercept and based on NSA leaked files from Edward Snowden, the NSA has deployed a program dubbed SOMALGET in the Bahamas, which collects all content of phone conversations. Some 100 million call events are being recorded each day and the data is kept for thirty days.
The program is part of a larger operation called MYSTIC, which collects metadata from a number of countries, including Mexico, the Philippines, and Kenya.