NSA Employee Database Creator Received Death Threat After Unveiling Project

M. C. McGrath, the creator of a searchable online database of intelligence workers, said he had received legal threats and even a death threat after unveiling his project.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — McGrath’s database, ICWATCH, includes 27,000 NSA contractors and was created with the help of online resumes on LinkedIn. The project was revealed at a conference in Berlin in early May.

"I'm not too worried about the death threat or complaints at this point as I haven't heard more on them," McGrath, 21, was quoted as saying by the ZDNet website on Tuesday.

Several people have asked to have their names removed from the database, the founder said. It is against his activist group’s policy, however, to remove data that has been made publicly available.

According to McGrath, not everyone whose names feature in ICWATCH responded negatively to the initiative. "Some people in the database seem more amused than upset to find their profiles and a couple [of them] have asked us technical questions about the data."

ICWATCH soon caught the interest of WikiLeaks, which announced a data merge over the weekend. The intelligence worker database can now be accessed through the WikiLeaks website.