Being brought back into the United States intelligence apparatus had one major advantage: they could legally monitor the entire Internet and retrieve whatever they wanted to see, just like before. Whether it was public or private cameras, keywords on social media, or even every data terminal—even those not connected to the Internet—they could access it all through the permissions granted by the S.H.I.E.L.D. database, completely legally. The public might not accept it, but the resolution Congress had secretly passed was still in effect. The Prism Project Snowden exposed was merely a small part of the CIA's cyber intelligence system; every other department had its own cyber intelligence system as well.
The two advanced AIs used by the City of Immortals to screen the Internet, including Samaritan, had once obtained those permissions. But those permissions had expired and were illegal now, so they could only hack in by searching for system vulnerabilities. S.H.I.E.L.D. had no advanced AI to assist with screening, but it also did not need to go through those troublesome steps, making its intelligence gathering considerably faster.
So once Agent Coulson identified Robbie Reyes, Elias Morrow and South Ridge Prison surfaced as well. Mike knew nothing about Elias Morrow, but when he saw the prison visitation recording S.H.I.E.L.D. had found, he realized that the City of Immortals, represented by Wanda Maximoff, had already gotten there first. He glanced around and saw that the researchers who had recently joined S.H.I.E.L.D. were all busy with their own work. Only then did he quietly breathe a sigh of relief.
Agent Coulson had used Jemma Simmons's authorization to view the recording—because of the change in leadership, he had lost some of his permissions as a field agent—then expertly entered the backend and deleted the system logs. Jemma Simmons had left work early and