The anti-secrecy group Wikileaks has threatened to release the name of a "mystery" country being targeted by massive surveillance by the US National Security Agency despite warnings that doing so could result to violence and possible deaths.

On Monday, journalist Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept released a report naming the Bahamas as one of the nations where the NSA has been collecting bulk information from phone conversations, but withheld the name of the other target country for security reasons.

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According to the report, the NSA has been secretly intercepting and recording phone conversations in the Bahamas under a top-secret program code-named SOMALGET.

The report adds that full-length audio conversations are not only recorded and stored up to 30 days, but that millions of shorter clips are being selected for long-term storage, which means that they can be accessed long after the original conversations have been wiped.

The information on the NSA's SOMALGET program was based on documents originally leaked by former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Wikileaks accused First Look Media, which publishes The Intercept, of censorship and threatened to release the name of the second country within 72 hours unless the identity of the nation was revealed in the original article.

"It is not the place of Firstlook or the Washington Post to deny the rights of an entire people to know they are being mass-recorded. It is not the place of Firstlook or WaPo to decide how a people will [choose] to act against mass breaches of their rights by the United States,"  Wikileaks said in a statement issued Monday.

The United States has expressed concern over the possible outcome if the name of the other target country is released but it is still unclear how the country will react to the situation should its identity be made public.

TagsNSA surveillance, Bahamas, SOMALGET, Edward Snowden