Report: NSA has system capable of recording an entire country’s phone calls

Every telephone call made in a foreign country can be recorded and replayed by the National Security Agency through their voice interception program, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden state that the surveillance technology, named MYSTIC, can record every phone call that occurs in the country where it is deployed. Users of the system are able to browse through billions of phone calls and hear voices from any call within a month of its occurrence, before they are overwritten with new recordings.

The Post said they are withholding details about which countries the program has been used at the request of U.S. officials. The article states that while analysts only listen to “a fraction of 1 percent of the calls,” they send “millions of voice clippings” each month for processing.