> Given that everyone involved was an American citizen, the NSA would not have been authorized to use their database to look up this information. It doesn't se

> Given that everyone involved was an American citizen, the NSA would not have been authorized to use their database to look up this information. It doesn't seem that the NSA accepts anyone else's "authority". No authorized != doesn't happen. They can and do share information about regular crimes. See: "parallel construction". They provide this info secretly to local police so that they can create a clean chain of evidence without implicating the NSA.