ICREACH

The National Security Agency (NSA) of the USA developed own search system like Google.com to which more than two tens power strutur, including FBI, CIA and the Anti-Drug Office (Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA) have access. Reported about it in the summer of 2014 the The Intercept edition with reference to the new classified documents published by Edward Snowden^[1].

News was mentioned in Twitter by the Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Nikolai Nikiforov. "The NSA/NSA of the USA developed search engine for your illegally intercepted and saved telephone negotiations, SMS, e-mail" — he commented.

The database of the search system ICREACH contains billions of records of the metadata concerning private communication sessions of foreign citizens and millions of records concerning citizens of the USA to whom any charges were not brought.

Metadata to which the search system gives access include phone numbers, unique numbers of SIM cards, the e-mail addresses, etc. This information can be used for tracking of movements of people, drawing up the list of their friends, relatives and acquaintances, prediction of the subsequent actions, clarification of religious affiliation and political preferences.

Using special pointers, users of a system could look for information related to certain people. For example, the list of phone numbers by which a certain person called for the last month. A system has the simplest interface with a search line and issues results on the separate page.

In one of documents it is said that work on the ICREACH system began in 2005 and was caused by need of prospecting community to have access to metadata and capability of the NSA to collect such data in large volumes.

Test start took place in 2007 under the leadership of the former director of the NSA Keith Alexander. The annual budget on contents was defined in the range of $2.5-4.5 million. When a system started working to the full extent, it is unknown. But it is supposed that eventually the NSA was succeeded to be ahead of schedule and collect over 850 billion records of metadata about which it was told initially. In the report for 2010 it was reported that ICREACH became the main tools for data exchange among intelligence agencies.

According to The Intercept, new promulgated documents for the first time prove that it the NSA for many years provided direct access to confidential data to different law enforcement agencies.

In addition to law enforcement agencies of the USA, the partner countries entering into the Five Eyes group had access to ICREACH: Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia.

According to the experts polled by The Intercept, the ICREACH system could be used by law enforcement agencies of the USA for shadowing suspects without leave of the court. When they learned that the suspect really breaks the law, they represented to court other proofs. At the same time the real source of information disappeared.

Information on ICREACH — the next portion of data published by the former system administrator of the NSA Edward Snowden who received the residence permit in Russia for three years. In a recent interview to the Wired magazine he told that the lie which representatives of the agency often used on public forced to take this step it.

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