I had to go back to the article to find the exact passage you were referring to. "Puzzled, Gomez resorted to a resource she taps only rarely: the help of friends at federal agencies, friends for whom she has done favors and who in return are willing to let her check her information against government databases. 'Their databases turn up what we call ‘trace details’ that you can’t get with the databases available to ordinary citizens,' Gomez says: phone numbers, addresses, company and individual names that have in some way been associated."
Depending on the status of the underlying civil recovery action that prompted someone to hire the bounty hunter, there may have been legal grounds for her to have that "access," especially if what she was doing was saying, "Here are some dots that I think connect in this way, can you tell me, yes or no, if this makes any sense?" But, yes, depending on the exact rules involved of what agency, and what the bounty hunter is pursuing in what case, and what was asked and answered, this could be illegal. Or not. It's not entirely sure if anything illegal was done in what was reported in that paragraph. The term "illegal search" has a much more specific meaning in legal language.
Depending on the status of the underlying civil recovery action that prompted someone to hire the bounty hunter, there may have been legal grounds for her to have that "access," especially if what she was doing was saying, "Here are some dots that I think connect in this way, can you tell me, yes or no, if this makes any sense?" But, yes, depending on the exact rules involved of what agency, and what the bounty hunter is pursuing in what case, and what was asked and answered, this could be illegal. Or not. It's not entirely sure if anything illegal was done in what was reported in that paragraph. The term "illegal search" has a much more specific meaning in legal language.