NSA paid Telcos $100 million for our data

[Mr Kleen]

Next time the police ask to search your car, ask for payment. You never know, it worked for AT&T:

Telcos 'Volunteered' To Hand Over Data To NSA... And Got Over $100 Million For It

[Sabre]

Intelligence, for love of country and profit.... I can't say any defense contractors do any different :/

[complacent]

yet another reason i'm happy to be out da game.

when will we see the lowest boundary?

[drwrx]

The report tallies the costs of the program, which came to a bit more than $146 million over fiscal years 2002–2006. But only about $44 million of that went to the software and hardware infrastructure needed to sift through all that data. By far the biggest expense category—accounting for the other $102 million in outlays—was the “metadata and content” itself.

I'm not certain I see the scandal here. Certainly the unwarranted data gathering is bad, but paying outside companies to parse data for 5 years at $146 million doesn't shock me as excessive as far as costs go. We are told that $44 million went to software and hardware infrastructure leaving $102 million—or just over $20 million a year—for the staff, facilities and all the other related expenses of running an intelligence/surveillance program. I didn't see any tally of the man-hours required, but if it took hundreds of thousands of man-hours to compile and generate the content needed, would the cost seem excessive? You can be certain there are many, many government programs (some probably just as morally and ethically questionable) that blow through significantly more money in one year than this example did in 5.

[Mr Kleen]

The cost of running the program was in the NSA budget already. The $100 million payment was for the data itself.

[drwrx]

Ah, so it's just a nice payout to the service provider to hand over the data.
"Hello we would like to rummage through your wife's underwear drawer."
"Are you kidding, get lost you creeps!"
"Oh I'm sorry did we not mention there is $100,000 in it for you?"
"Here, look as much as you like, I have already sorted everything by color and style."

[Mr Kleen]

Feels a bit like that, don't it?

[Sabre]