The National Security Agency has created a “Google-like” search engine to give domestic and international government agencies access to records of billions of calls, texts and instant messages sent by millions of people.
The search engine, called ICReach, had about 850 billion metadata items from 2007 that mainly concern calls, but not exclusively, from foreign nationals.
Metadata is the data surrounding a communication, but not the content of the message or phone call. In the case of ICReach, the program includes the date, time and duration of calls, the caller and destination numbers, and, in the case of a cell phone, the unique IMEI number of the device being used, according to a document published earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union.
