Apparently, there is no hiding from the government. The National Security Agency (NSA) created its own "Google-like" search engine that will give the government access to your phone conversations, emails, Internet chats and your location.
The agency's search engine will share more than 850 billion records with two-dozen government agencies such as the FBI and DEA.
The search engine, called ICREACH, will make a new batch of U.S. citizen data available to federal law enforcement. The NSA's Google-like search engine was created to make foreign citizen information more accessible to organizations like the CIA, FBI and DEA, but millions of American citizen records were also thrown into the database.
The Google-like search engine is "the first definitive evidence that the NSA has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies," investigative site The Intercept writes.
Previous investigations into the NSA found that nine out of 10 messages intercepted by the spy organization came from regular people and not targets. The investigation found medical records, resumes, family photos, and even children's school records belonging to non-targets were saved on NSA's databases.
"None of the hits that were received were relevant," two Navy cryptology technicians write in one of the summaries regarding the nonproductive surveillance.
This new collection of data from non-threatening citizens that is provided to government agencies through ICREACH is not the same data from non-target Americans that was reported this summer. An estimated 900,000 individuals were subjected to NSA's spying, whether they were considered a target or not.
ICREACH can be used by government agencies to track a person's movements, help predict their future actions, map out their social circles and could possibly reveal religious or political beliefs.
Experts worry that ICREACH will not be used to battle terrorism, but rather be used by law enforcement as a tool for domestic investigations.
"To me, this is extremely troublesome," said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice. "The myth that metadata is just a bunch of numbers and is not as revealing as actual communications content was exploded long ago-this is a trove of incredibly sensitive information."
NSA's Google-like search engine can legally exist because of Excusive Order 12333 from the Regan administration. The NSA does not need approval from Congress to run the program.
