The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording \u201c100 percent\u201d of a foreign country\u2019s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n
A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine \u2014 one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance.<\/p>\n
The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for \u201cretrospective retrieval,\u201d and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.<\/p>\n
In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording \u201cevery single\u201d conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary.<\/p>\n
The call buffer opens a door \u201cinto the past,\u201d the summary says, enabling users to \u201cretrieve audio of interest that was not tasked at the time of the original call.\u201d Analysts listen to only a fraction of 1 percent of the calls, but the absolute numbers are high. Each month, they send millions of voice clippings, or \u201ccuts,\u201d for processing and long-term storage.<\/p>\n
At the request of U.S. officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned.<\/p>\n
No other NSA program disclosed to date<\/a> has swallowed a nation\u2019s telephone network whole. Outside experts have sometimes described that prospect as disquieting but remote, with notable implications for a growing debate over the NSA\u2019s practice of \u201cbulk collection\u201d abroad.<\/p>\n Bulk methods capture massive data flows \u201cwithout the use of discriminants,\u201d as President Obama put it<\/a> in January. By design, they vacuum up all the data they touch \u2014 meaning that most of the conversations collected by RETRO would be irrelevant to U.S. national security interests.<\/p>\n In the view of U.S. officials, however, the capability is highly valuable.<\/p>\n In a statement, Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to comment on \u201cspecific alleged intelligence activities.\u201d Speaking generally, she said \u201cnew or emerging threats\u201d are \u201coften 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.\u201d<\/p>\n NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines, in an e-mailed statement, said that \u201ccontinuous and selective reporting of specific techniques and tools used for legitimate U.S. foreign intelligence activities is highly detrimental to the national security of the United States and of our allies, and places at risk those we are sworn to protect.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the documents provided by Snowden suggest that high-volume eavesdropping may soon be extended to other countries, if it has not been already. The RETRO tool was built three years ago as a \u201cunique one-off capability,\u201d but last year\u2019s secret intelligence budget<\/a> named five more countries for which the MYSTIC program provides \u201ccomprehensive metadata access and content,\u201d with a sixth expected to be in place by last October.<\/p>\n The budget did not say whether the NSA now records calls in quantity in those countries, or expects to do so. A separate document placed high priority on planning \u201cfor MYSTIC accesses against projected new mission requirements,\u201d including \u201cvoice.\u201d<\/p>\n Ubiquitous voice surveillance, even overseas, pulls in a great deal of content from Americans who telephone, visit and work in the target country. It may also be seen as inconsistent with Obama\u2019s Jan. 17 pledge \u201cthat the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don\u2019t threaten our national security,\u201d regardless of nationality, \u201cand that we take their privacy concerns into account.\u201d<\/p>\n In a presidential policy directive<\/a>, Obama instructed the NSA and other agencies that bulk acquisition may be used only to gather intelligence on one of six specified threats, including nuclear proliferation and terrorism. The directive, however, also noted that limits on bulk collection \u201cdo not apply to signals intelligence data that is temporarily acquired to facilitate targeted collection.\u201d<\/p>\n The emblem of the MYSTIC program depicts a cartoon wizard with a telephone-headed staff<\/a>. Among the agency\u2019s bulk collection programs disclosed over the past year, its focus on the spoken word is unique. Most of the programs have involved the bulk collection of either metadata<\/a> \u2014 which does not include content \u2014 or text, such as e-mail address books<\/a>.<\/p>\n Telephone calls are often thought to be more ephemeral and less suited than text for processing, storage and search. Indeed, there are indications that the call-recording program has been hindered by the NSA\u2019s limited capacity to store and transmit bulky voice files.<\/p>\n In the first year of its deployment, a program officer wrote that the project \u201chas long since reached the point where it was collecting and sending home far more than the bandwidth could handle.\u201d<\/p>\n Because of similar capacity limits across a range of collection programs, the NSA is leaping forward with cloud-based collection systems and a gargantuan new \u201cmission data repository\u201d in Utah. According to its overview briefing, the Utah facility is designed \u201cto cope with the vast increases in digital data that have accompanied the rise of the global network.\u201d<\/p>\n Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said history suggests that \u201cover the next couple of years they will expand to more countries, retain data longer and expand the secondary uses.\u201d<\/p>\n Spokesmen for the NSA and the Office of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. declined to confirm or deny expansion plans or discuss the criteria for any change.<\/p>\n Based on RETRO\u2019s internal reviews, the NSA has strong motive to deploy it elsewhere. In the documents and interviews, U.S. officials said RETRO is uniquely valuable when an analyst first uncovers a new name or telephone number of interest.<\/p>\n With up to 30 days of recorded conversations in hand, the NSA can pull an instant history of the subject\u2019s movements, associates and plans. Some other U.S. intelligence agencies also have access to RETRO.<\/p>\n Highly classified briefings cite examples in which the tool offered high-stakes intelligence that would not have existed under traditional surveillance programs in which subjects were identified for targeting in advance. Unlike most of the government\u2019s public claims about the value of controversial programs, the briefings supply names, dates, locations and fragments of intercepted calls in convincing detail.<\/p>\n Present and former U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide context for a classified program, acknowledged that large numbers of conversations involving Americans would be gathered from the country where RETRO operates.<\/p>\n The NSA does not attempt to filter out their calls, defining them as communications \u201cacquired incidentally as a result of collection directed against appropriate foreign intelligence targets.\u201d<\/p>\n Until about 20 years ago, such incidental collection was unusual unless an American was communicating directly with a foreign intelligence target. In bulk collection systems, which are exponentially more capable than the ones in use throughout the Cold War, calls and other data from U.S. citizens and permanent residents are regularly ingested by the millions.<\/p>\n Under the NSA\u2019s internal \u201cminimization rules<\/a>,\u201d those intercepted communications \u201cmay be retained and processed\u201d and included in intelligence reports. The agency generally removes the names of U.S. callers, but there are several broadly worded exceptions.<\/p>\n An independent group tasked by the White House to review U.S. surveillance policies<\/a> recommended that incidentally collected U.S. calls and e-mails \u2014 including those obtained overseas \u2014 should nearly always \u201cbe purged upon detection.\u201d Obama did not accept that recommendation.<\/p>\n Vines, in her statement, said the NSA\u2019s work is \u201cstrictly conducted under the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n RETRO and MYSTIC are carried out under Executive Order 12333<\/a>, the traditional grant of presidential authority to intelligence agencies for operations outside the United States.<\/p>\n