Leaked File Details U.S. Phone Monitoring Abroad --- The National Security Agency is recording all telephone calls and their routing data in one foreign country and retaining that information for a month so that it can be analyzed later, according to a report based on a top secret intelligence document. --- Similar but less comprehensive efforts exist in at least four other foreign countries, according to a classified 2013 document provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former agency contractor. -- The collection effort was first disclosed on Tuesday by The Washington Post, which cited a classified summary of the program, code-named Mystic. The Post account said that the summary, also leaked by Mr. Snowden, noted that “every single” phone call in one foreign country was saved for 30 days before being purged. -- With each new disclosure of N.S.A. spying programs and their deep reach into communications around the globe, the data known to be retained by the agency grows. Still, it is not surprising that spy agencies can now record every call in a country, given the declining costs of data storage, said John Villasenor, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is also affiliated with the Brookings Institution. -- The 2013 N.S.A. document referring to a potential expansion of the program briefly describes it. “Capabilities will offer near-real time, complete access” to that country’s phone network, the document says, “and provide for retrospective tasking and near real-time access/delivery of metadata as required.” -- The Mystic program already records phone calls in at least four other foreign countries, the document says. It says that the program records only “targeted communications” in those countries. At the request of the office of the director of national intelligence, The New York Times withheld their names because of national security concerns. --- A statement issued by the agency said that it “does not conduct signals intelligence collection in any country, or anywhere in the world, unless it is necessary to advance national security and foreign policy interests.” The statement added that all intelligence collection must be carried out legally “with respect for the fact that routine communications and communications of national security interest increasingly transit the same networks.” -- If the agency is recording vast numbers of phone calls in a foreign country, the international communications of Americans are bound to be recorded, even if only temporarily. The N.S.A. says that procedures require the agency to pare out Americans from its databases and protect private information, but the rules contain exceptions that have never been fully clarified. The routing and billing information accompanying a call is known as metadata. The “retrospective tasking” — or analyzing a phone call after it was made — takes place in a program code-named Retro Tool, according to a fragment of a classified document released by The Post. - More, JAMES GLANZ, NYTimes, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/us/leaked-file-details-us-phone-monitoring-abroad.html?ref=world