Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency has built its own "Google-like" search engine containing digital records of different U.S government agencies including federal law enforcement offices.
This was first reported by The Intercept, an investigative site that conducted a documentary review of Snowden's leaked files. The site described NSA's search engine as "the first definitive evidence that the NSA has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies."
The Google-like search engine dubbed as ICREACH is a database storing at least 850 billion phone calls, email messages, chat messages and cellphone locations. ICREACH was developed and maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the report.
The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence said there is indeed a database called ICREACH, but he said it is mainly used to facilitate data sharing as directed by Executive Order 12333. Similarly, a spokesperson for the agency defended the need for such a database to facilitate faster sharing of information, especially after the 9-11 attack.
According to a memo from 2010, at least 1,000 analysts from 23 government agencies are authorized to access ICREACH. The search engine was also used by these agencies to monitor the location of their targets, identify their contacts and map out their networks.
Legal experts were concerned about the extensive information stored in ICREACH as it might be used for investigations unrelated to terrorism.
"This is not something that I think the government should be doing," Brian Owsley, an assistant professor of law at Indiana Tech Law School, told The Intercept. "Perhaps if information is useful in a specific case, they can get judicial authority to provide it to another agency. But there shouldn't be this buddy-buddy system back and forth."
