The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) last night promised to urgently investigate “the integrity” of its cellular network, amid claims that the US National Security Agency (NSA) is intercepting almost every mobile call made in the Bahamas.

Responding to the revelations, which were revealed on the Internet yesterday by the reporter who first broke the NSA scandal, Marlon Johnson, BTC’s senior vice-president for brand and communications, pledged that the monopoly cellular provider would “definitely” examine the claims.

“It has come to our attention,” Mr Johnson told Tribune Business. “We will definitely investigate the matter, but as far as we are concerned, no such activity is going on. We will definitely looking into it.”

He moved rapidly to scotch any suggestion that BTC’s controlling shareholder, UK-owned and listed Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC), would have been involved in, known of or approved of such NSA activities.

“Absolutely not; not at all,” Mr Johnson replied, when this was put to him by Tribune Business. “We follow the Data Protection Act, and just by good business practice and by law we do not disclose anyone’s information to anybody, other than through the proper Bahamian legal channels.

“But as with anything of this nature, we will definitely examine it and looking into the integrity of the system. We are not part of it [the alleged NSA operation].”

Mr Johnson said any information disclosures by BTC were done in accordance with the law and proper legal processes in the Bahamas.

“We feel confident in the integrity of the network, but will take all necessary steps to investigate and maintain the integrity of the network,” he added.

Mr Johnson and BTC may be less confident when they read the article published yesterday by The Intercept and its editor, Glenn Greenwald. He was the journalist who broke the NSA spying story, and the revelations on the Bahamas appear to have come from the same cache of documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The article alleges that the Bahamas, and another unnamed country, have been used as test ‘guinea pigs’ for an NSA spying/eavesdropping program called SOMALGET.

This program, according to Greenwald and his fellow journalists, has been used to “secretly intercept, record and archive the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation on the island nation of the Bahamas”. Calls and their content, it alleges, have been archived for up to 30 days or one month.

The revelations, if true, (and given that they are based on leaked NSA documents, this seems likely), are likely to have a deeply negative, chilling effect on the Bahamas’ diplomatic and commercial relations with its largest neighbour and trading partner.

While the NSA appears to have been using SOMALGET to chiefly target drug and human traffickers, the program could also be used for commercial spying - something that would damage the interests of this nation’s private sector.

K P Turnquest, the FNM MP for east Grand Bahama and a former Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce president, expressed concern about the commercial competitiveness implications when contacted by Tribune Business yesterday.

He said the NSA program could be made to do bad, such as intellectual property theft and the passing of Bahamian trade secrets to the US government and American companies.

“That is shocking. I don’t know what to say, you’ve caught me off guard,” Mr Turnquest replied, when contacted by Tribune Business on the matter.

He added: “Most of the businesses in this country are operating in accordance with the law, so from that perspective I wouldn’t be too concerned.

“There are intellectual property and competition issues, though, that may be of concern.”

Mr Turnquest said the issue also highlighted the Bahamas’s own internal issues with its National Intelligence Agency, and the fact it might be engaged in similar activities that have no basis in law.

The NSA program could also be valuable as a tool to discover Bahamian government policy positions. Among those that could be especially valuable to the US are this nation’s position in the ongoing World Trade Organisation (WTO) membership negotiations; what the Bahamas planned to do over the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA); and a whole host of investment and business policy issues.\

The revelations could also have a damaging effect on the Bahamas’ tourism industry, and its attractiveness as a second home destination and for foreign investment, as many persons may have reservations coming here knowing the NSA is intercepting their mobile calls.

Robert Myers, the newly-elected Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chairman, told Tribune Business that intercepting and storing the content of private Bahamian cellular calls was “very disturbing”.

“It’s just an invasion of privacy and I don’t think it should happen,” he said. “They shouldn’t have any right to record our conversations. I have no personal concerns, but they’re wrong to do it. I think it’s cheeky, I don’t agree with it, and it shouldn’t happen. It ought to stop.”

The Intercept article said the NSA program was operating without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government.

It added that the NSA seemed to have used existing co-operation channels between the Bahamas and US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as “ a backdoor to the country’s cellular telephone network, enabling it 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”.

The Intercept described SOMALGET as “a cutting-edge tool that enables the NSA to vacuum up and store the actual content of every conversation in an entire country”.