Above: Nassau (CJ Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Has the United States National Security Agency been covertly recording and storing all phone calls made in the Bahamas?

That’s the allegation in a report by journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, and in a statement Tuesday the Bahamian government said the report was “startling.”

Greenwald’s report was based on documents provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and alleged that the phone surveillance was “part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET – that was implemented without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government.”

The programme gave the NSA the ability to “covertly record and store the ‘full take audio’ of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas — and to replay those calls for up to a month,” Greenwald reported.

The Bahamian government said that some explanation would be required formally to confirm or deny the truth and authenticity of the allegations.

“The news that there is spying and the collecting of the audio of mobile phone calls of Bahamians by agencies of another country is clearly startling,” the Bahamian Foreign Ministry said in the statement. “The facts must be determined. Otherwise, the behavior described would be clearly illegal and on the face of it an abuse of powers. It would also represent a great moral failing on the part of its perpetrators, in addition to illegality which challenges the founding principles of the rule of law. It would also be an invasion of the privacy of the individual, a cherished democratic value and a legal right.”

The Bahamian government said it the country’s Charge in Washington, DC had contacted the US [State Department] for an explanation, and that it expected Ambassador Eugene Newry to meet with the US [State Department] Tuesday.

“We shall continue to keep the Bahamian people informed as we seek to discover what this is about and what it means,” the Ministry said.