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850 Billion NSA Surveillance Records Searchable By Domestic Law Enforcement

Posted by Unknown on from the you're-a-criminal dept.

onproton (3434437) writes The Intercept reported today on classified documents revealing that the NSA has built its own "Google-like" search engine to provide over 850 billion collected records directly to law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the DEA. Reporter Ryan Gallagher explains, "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." The search engine, called ICREACH, allows analysts to search an array of databases, some of which contain metadata collected on innocent American citizens, for the purposes of "foreign intelligence." However, questions have been raised over its potential for abuse in what is known as "parallel construction," a process in which agencies use surveillance resources in domestic investigations, and then later cover it up by creating a different evidence trail to use in court.

8 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. ICREACH? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I always knew Apple was involved in this.

    1. Re:ICREACH? by aralin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, it won't. The US govt. figured out something that the Russians still didn't. Talk is cheap, actions are rare. You can let them talk and talk and talk, you just make up some excuse to arrest or harass the few who act. There won't be so many so you can usually hide it under drug arrests or something else innocent looking. With enough laws on the books, everyone is guilty of something and since you know what everyone is doing, you can arrest pretty much anyone for a legitimate on the books crime. And if you cannot arrest them, maybe their family or friends did something illegal. You can blackmail, bargain, ... That is the power of NSA.

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
  2. Told ya... by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So all that "slippery slope" shit from 10 years ago doesn't seem so stupid now, does it?

    1. Re:Told ya... by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It never seemed stupid to anyone with even a tiny bit of knowledge about history.

      Oh come on. I know a guy with that same attitude at work. You're normalizing the situation with this nonsense fantasy that you knew all along. You didn't know all along... you worried about it, you feared for it, but you didn't know Now you do, and you should be surprised... shocked... outraged... But to sit back in your lazyboy, burp, and say "yea, I figured!" is freaking ridiculous. Write you God damned congressman. Get a picket sign. The house is on fire, just because you told the kids not to play with matches doesn't mean you don't need to grab a bucket now.

    2. Re:Told ya... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But there's another thing that some people don't account for: a lot of people, operating under the same (often but not always) erroneous assumptions or misinformation, can make it look like there is a conspiracy when it's really not conspiracy at all. Just a lot of people making the same mistakes.

      That is a very important fact. These things happen not because of deliberate malevolence - something that only exists in movies and fairy tales - they happen because "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." The people who create these systems are too ignorant of history and human nature, too focused on catching bad guys and take their own righteousness for granted.

      There is a famous quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche that goes, "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." It took me many years to fully grasp the depths of that aphorism, but I see it at the heart of everything that is wrong with US government's response to 9/11.

  3. as i've said before.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you have voted for a republican or a democrat in the last 30 years or so, this is your fault.

    YOU.

    The signs were all there, you ignored them, and kept voting the same jokers in, perpetuating the same power structures, letting the same people get away with gross violations of the law that would get any one of us thrown in prison.

    Now, welcome to the surveillance state. I hope you're happy with the results. But it gets better. It doesn't end here. We've seen, in other societies, where this goes. It doesn't end well.

    But you don't care about that, do you? Because Emmy Awards! Because Jellyfish stung 250 people in one day!

  4. Search for me but not for thee by jcrb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh sure they have a wonderful system for searching what they want to search and can't be troubled to search what they should be able to but don't want to..

    http://www.judicialwatch.org/p...
    "Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search. "

    The saying "Laws are for the little people" used to be funny, now, not so much.

    --
    -jon
  5. Parallel BS by LessThanObvious · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ( "Parallel Construction" = Lying = Prosecutorial Malfeasance = A Crime ) It makes my skin crawl knowing that these guys are so out of control that we have an official term for lying to the judge and defense counsel about the source of evidence. If the NSA hears about a delivery of 500 Kilos of drugs and they intercept it, I'm fine with that, but unless the actual source of the information is disclosed it should be a crime to fake the investigation process to get it into court. If they can't prosecute, oh well, seize the drugs and call it a win.