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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Ryan Devereaux
The Intercept Reporter
LINKTV 05/20/2014
Devereaux: We had for weeks, as we tried to report this story, trying to determine whether or not it was responsible to name this country. The NSA and government did not want us to name any of the countries. We named four of them. With this final country, we came to the conclusion that naming it would very likely increase risk for people on the ground. And as you know, Amy, this is one of those decisions that, as a journalist covering national security stories, is very difficult to make. We don’t take it lightly at all. But when it comes to potential for people being killed, we take that seriously. Unfortunately, that’s about as much as I can say. We did, however, name a number of other countries that the government does not want us to name, including the Bahamas.
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Ryan Devereaux
The Intercept Reporter
LINKTV 05/20/2014
Devereaux: It is important to understand this story, the difference between Mystic and SOMALGET. Mystic is the commercial center program that provides legitimate commercial services to foreign governments while collecting covertly on the side and in the background signals intelligence on those countries. So this program targets the mobile communications networks of these countries. Basically what the NSA does is sneak in there through its commercial provider and pullout signals intelligence. The second program, SOMALGET, which is active in the Bahamas, is even more robust. What SOMALGET does is attacks the mobile communications network and sucks up the actual content of calls on that line.
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Ryan Devereaux
The Intercept Reporter
LINKTV 05/20/2014
Devereaux: So in the Bahamas, the NSA is able to pick up every single phone call on the mobile communications network and essentially house those calls for up to 30 days, allowing U.S. analyst to go back and retrieve the communications of people who they were targeting. The idea is that they could listen in on conversations that they were not looking for in the first place
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Ryan Devereaux
The Intercept Reporter
LINKTV 05/20/2014
Devereaux: So what the NSA has been able to do here in the Bahamas is basically collect everything that’s there, be able to basically resurrect conversations at will, and they're using this as a test bed, basically – this the exact the phrase that the NSA uses in the documents. The Bahamas is being used as a test for implementation of these systems elsewhere.
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Ryan Devereaux
The Intercept Reporter
LINKTV 05/20/2014
Devereaux: This is one of the most important elements of this story for people to understand. Is the legal issue, the NSA operating in a pretty gray area here. The Bahamas has been working in the last several years to sort of establish statutes surrounding communication intercepts but it is all in the works. A lot of countries around the world have existing standards and statutes regarding interception of communications. That’s not to say that this is legal under Bahamian law. It does not seem to be. It seems to be illegal. But still, the Bahamas is a bit behind some other countries in terms of rigorous standards.
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Ryan Devereaux
The Intercept Reporter
LINKTV 05/20/2014
Devereaux: With respect to U.S. law, under , Executive Order 12333 which the NSA and CIA uses to conduct surveillance abroad, there is a lot that US analysts and agents can do. This could very well, under executive order 12333, be legal for the NSA to be doing. The more important question about what this means for U.S. cooperation with foreign law enforcement agencies and the DEA's operations abroad, this is central and key. Because the idea of lawful intercept, the very thing that allows the NSA access to these networks, is premised on the idea that you have a specific person that you are targeting who is under suspicion of criminal activity. A judge signs a warrant. This is judicially approved and you go after one person. You don’t have an entire country in the hopes of finding something interesting.
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