850 Billion NSA Surveillance Records Searchable By Domestic Law Enforcement 207
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.
admission of guilt? (Score:4, Interesting)
The NSA is supposed to only collect information on foreigners. Right? So how could their DB be of any use to domestic law enforcement? Or perhaps I'm a little naive.
Re:Told ya... (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.
Re:Told ya... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course no one would guess what the NSA is 'really' up to by providing this database. The NSA are creating another database, who searches what when. They are tracking every search, who did it, how it associates with other searches made by that person over time. Nothing like being able to extort the guys with guns in uniforms or which county mounties to feed to the feds, or which feds to gain control of. Using this NSA database would have to be a seriously dangerous thing, best left to an assigned clerical officer to conduct all the searches prepare a report and thus obfuscate the nature of the individual searches. The database is bait and also a means by which to attempt to legitimate criminal acts, the initial with out warrant invasion of privacy.
Just to remind people what privacy really is all about. Slaves have none, no privacy of person, all of their body was accessible to their master for what ever abuse their master was inclined too, the slave had no right to private property and the slave had no right to private thought or expression. Privacy is all about ceasing to be a slave, a right to privacy of person, privacy of possessions and privacy of thought. The more rights to privacy you lose the more you become a slave. The more they take, the more they will want to take, until you are fully enslaved. That is the real reason to fight for as much privacy as possible to keep the threat of slavery as distant as possible.