NSA tips off law enforcement, asks them to keep the practice secret

Just days after the NYT wrote about the NSA denying other federal intelligence agencies access to their surveillance tools comes the disclosure that a US Drug Enforcement Administration unit called Special Operations Division (SOD) has been channeling information collected by the NSA to law enforcement agencies in order to help them start investigations of suspected criminals.

The SOD, whose existence is little known to the greater public, is a sort of middleman that receives information regarding traditional criminal activities and suspected perpetrators gathered by the NSA via wiretaps, informants, intelligence intercepts, and decides how much of it to share with which field offices and agents.

According to the information and documents Reuters received from unnamed officials, SOD is comprised of FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS and DHS agents, and has been started in 1994.

SOURCE: net-security.org