A simply blockbuster new piece of information was just released tonight from the Washington Post, that reveals another gigantic piece of the puzzle, this time the financial one. While we already knew telecom companies were taking money for surveillance, the amounts seemed modest. That’s because that was only the part they revealed to the public. This newly released information shows a massive budget, hundreds of millions of dollars, which are being used to “grease the surveillance wheels.” The NSA seems to pay very well.
This shouldn’t come as a total surprise, atter all, Snowden wasn’t living in a teepee in the middle of Death Valley. No, he seemed to have a very comfortable life in Hawaii, and that’s how they get you. That’s why so few people talk. Who would want to shake the trees and bring down the system that is rewarding you so handsomely. Most people wouldn’t, and they don’t.
That’s precisely what makes Edward Snowden’s act so courageous. We only needed one. He knew that and realized that if not him, then who? Could he afford to wait around and assume someone else will do the job? He decided he couldn’t and for that we are forever indebted. Now from the Washington Post:
The National Security Agency is paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to U.S. companies for clandestine access to their communications networks, filtering vast traffic flows for foreign targets in a process that also sweeps in large volumes of American telephone calls, e-mails and instant messages.
The bulk of the spending, detailed in a multi-volume intelligence budget obtained by The Washington Post, goes to participants in a Corporate Partner Access Project for major U.S. telecommunications providers. The documents open an important window into surveillance operations on U.S. territory that have been the subject of debate since they were revealed by The Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper in June.
New details of the corporate-partner project, which falls under the NSA’s Special Source Operations, confirm that the agency taps into “high volume circuit and packet-switched networks,” according to the spending blueprint for fiscal 2013. The program was expected to cost $278 million in the current fiscal year, down nearly one-third from its peak of $394 million in 2011.
Although the companies are required to comply with lawful surveillance orders, privacy advocates say the multimillion-dollar payments could create a profit motive to offer more than the required assistance.
“It turns surveillance into a revenue stream, and that’s not the way it’s supposed to work,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. “The fact that the government is paying money to telephone companies to turn over information that they are compelled to turn over is very troubling.”
Several of the companies that provide information to PRISM, including Apple, Facebook and Google, say they take no payments from the government when they comply with national security requests. Others say they do take payments in some circumstances. The Guardian reported last week that the NSA had covered “millions of dollars” in costs that some technology companies incurred to comply with government demands for information.
Hmmm looks like someone seems to be lying again.
In response to questions in 2012 from then-Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who was elected to the Senate in June, several telecommunications companies detailed their prices for surveillance services to law enforcement agencies under individual warrants and subpoenas. AT&T, for example, reported that it charges $325 to activate surveillance of an account and also a daily rate of $5 or $10, depending on the information gathered. For providing the numbers that have accessed cell towers, meanwhile, AT&T charged $75 per tower, the company said in a letter.
No payments have been previously disclosed for mass surveillance access to traffic flowing across a company’s infrastructure.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Mike
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Maybe they will have a foot note in the new GDP calc that shows
*big brother Snitch fees* its helping the QE feedback loop
Simmer down krieger it flows back into ponzinomics!!
great post – we must not let this issue get swept under the rug. Identify the criminal activities of the NSA and don’t stop. There WILL be more whistleblowers – the ship stinks and the obvious mafia-style killings betraying the whoredom of Vichy DC. On the plus side, at least we have seen some semblance of coming to terms with reality in Holder’s statement of the problems with mandatory minimum drug offence sentencing and the DOJ statement on giving some leeway to State Cannabis Freedom laws.
Tweets to my congressmen don’t show up on their pages unless I am logged into the account that tweeted, so am I the only one that can see them? They are not protected. Try tweeting to pro war congressmen & see if your tweets show up when viewed from another account. @RepFitzpatrick @SenBobCasey @SenToomey