WikiLeaks names Afghanistan as second country where NSA records all mobile phone calls
Hours after saying it would delay announcement, group identifies 'Country X'
WikiLeaks has announced that Afghanistan is the second country to have been targeted by the NSA's massive cellphone data spying programme, defying warnings that the revelation would endanger lives.
Julian Assange wrote on the whistle-blower site's page that the NSA "has been recording and storing nearly all the domestic [and international] phone calls".
Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the Edward Snowden story and who now works with The Intercept website, had said his site would not reveal the name of the country for fear it would "lead to deaths".
The Washington Post has previously chosen not to disclose the name. In those reports, which revealed the Bahamas as one of "two or more" countries targeted by the NSA's powerful Somalget programme, the second was called "country x".
But Assange, who called the programme an "ongoing crime of mass espionage", opposed the alleged "censorship", which he said was made at the request of the US government.
"We do not believe it is the place of media to 'aid and abet' a state in escaping detection and prosecution for a serious crime against a population," Assange wrote.