The NSA is currently recording an entire country's phone calls

[Myna]

According to leaked documents obtained by The Washington Post, the NSA currently has the capability to record 100% of a country's phone calls, enabling playback of any individual call for up to 30 days. The voice interception tool, dubbed MYSTIC, was launched in 2009 and became fully operational in 2011. According to the Post, it's currently deployed in at least one country, and has been considered for use in others, although the paper declined to name the specific nations involved for reasons of national security.

According to a classified summary, the program is a comprehensive and all-encompasing wiretap, recording "every single" conversation, and storing it for retrospective analysis up to a month after the fact. It also goes far beyond previously reported metadata collection programs, which captured phone numbers and call times but not the audio of the call itself. There's also reportedly no effort to filter out American calls caught in the dragnet, with any US numbers classified as "acquired incidentally as a result of collection directed against appropriate foreign intelligence targets."

News is under development. For further updates, visit http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/18/5522146/the-nsa-is-currently-recording-an-entire-countrys-phone-calls

[212eta]

...and their excuse will always be national security...

[anuseems]

Unlike previous programs that reportedly only collected metadata, the program in question today captures the audio of every single call. Whats more, the NSA makes no effort to filter out US-based calls that are acquired incidentally as a result of the dragnet.

The program reportedly isnt limited to just the NSA as other US agencies also have access to the database.