The NSA recording nearly every cell phone conversation in the Bahamas, without the Bahamian government’s permission, and similar programs in Kenya, the Philippines, Mexico and Afghanistan.
From Wikipedia
Did NSA have to hack every cell tower in the Bahamas?
As far as I can tell they were given a legal backdoor to help catch drug smugglers and used it to capture everything.
It seems many countries give them access to their systems willingly and they are absusing the privilege.
In addition, the program is a serious – and perhaps illegal – abuse of the access to international phone networks that other countries willingly grant the United States for legitimate law-enforcement surveillance. If the NSA is using the Drug Enforcement Administration’s relationship to the Bahamas as a cover for secretly recording the entire country’s mobile phone calls, it could imperil the longstanding tradition of international law enforcement cooperation that the United States enjoys with its allies.
Removed by mod