In other circumstances, a description of the search engine the
National Security Agency (NSA) invented in order to comb through
data about intelligence targets would be remarkably unremarkable.
We would expect the NSA to develop ways to access the intelligence
they’ve gathered efficiently, right? An internal search engine to
help government agencies find information they’ve all gathered
about terrorists across the world is just about the right way to
respond to the Sept. 11 attacks. Sharing more information between
agencies was supposed to be part of the solution.
Unfortunately, since that time we’ve discovered that we are
living in a world where the federal government has gathered far,
far more information about everybody on the planet, including its
own citizens, than we ever conceived. Thus, the latest news story
today originating from Edward Snowden’s treasure trove of
classified documents has a sinister slant that wouldn’t have
otherwise existed. Today The Intercept detailed the
surveillance search engine called ICREACH, which helps more than
two dozen federal agencies search through more than
850 billion records about individuals, both foreign and
domestic:
The documents provide the first definitive evidence that the NSA
has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly
accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies. Planning documents
for ICREACH, as the search engine is called, cite the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration as
key participants.ICREACH contains information on the private communications of
foreigners and, it appears, millions of records on American
citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Details about
its existence are contained in the archive of materials provided to
The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.Earlier revelations sourced to the Snowden documents have
exposed a multitude of NSA programs for collecting large volumes of
communications. The NSA has acknowledged that it shares some of its
collected data with domestic agencies like the FBI, but details
about the method and scope of its sharing have remained shrouded in
secrecy.
The big issue is again what the heck we mean by “metadata.” NSA
officials and defenders have been downplaying the word ever since
Snowden’s leaks began, trying to convince us all it’s just basic,
non-private info. But one of the documents The Intercept has
published shows that the NSA has added 25 additional forms of
“metadata” past what used to be traditionally accepted: phone
numbers called, what time and what length of calls and the like.
The new description of metadata includes everything from unique
cellphone codes, passport and flight records, visa application
records, and cellphone location data.
And then there’s the question as to whether this massive
expansion in metadata gathering is being used not to fight
terrorists but to help secure domestic crime convictions through
“parallel construction” processes, secretly sharing this info with
local law enforcement agencies:
Parallel construction involves law enforcement agents using
information gleaned from covert surveillance, but later covering up
their use of that data by creating a new evidence trail that
excludes it. This hides the true origin of the investigation from
defense lawyers and, on occasion, prosecutors and judges—which
means the legality of the evidence that triggered the investigation
cannot be challenged in court.In practice, this could mean that a DEA agent identifies an
individual he believes is involved in drug trafficking in the
United States on the basis of information stored on ICREACH. The
agent begins an investigation but pretends, in his records of the
investigation, that the original tip did not come from the secret
trove. Last year, Reuters
first reported details of parallel construction based on NSA
data, linking the practice to a unit known as the Special
Operations Division, which Reuters said distributes tips from NSA
intercepts and a DEA database known as DICE.Tampa attorney James Felman, chair of the American Bar
Association’s criminal justice section, told The Intercept
that parallel construction is a “tremendously problematic” tactic
because law enforcement agencies “must be honest with courts about
where they are getting their information.” The ICREACH revelations,
he said, “raise the question of whether parallel construction is
present in more cases than we had thought. And if that’s true, it
is deeply disturbing and disappointing.”
Read more about ICREACH at The Intercept
here and their latest crop of related documents here.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1mJCdgZ
via IFTTT