Slashdot Mirror
Inside the 2013 US Intelligence "Black Budget"
i_want_you_to_throw_ writes "U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government's top secret budget. The $52.6 billion 'black budget' for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses those funds or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress."
Time to pretend like the president has any actual control over any of this! Makes you feel like you as an American matter, doesn't it?
Douglas Adams was right. The presidency does not exist to wield power. The presidency exists to distract attention away from the wielding of power.
And saw the American public ripping the big government a new asshole.
Good job peeps. Keep doin gods work.
We could spend this money almost any other way and do much more good.
Obama's (and the neocon's) response: bomb a civil war in the Middle East...
$52 billion? That's like burning up a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffet every year.
With that amount of money spent, there shouldn't a terrorist left breathing on the face of the planet.
Um, Secret Squirrel guys, I think that you are doing something completely wrong with that money. I know that you like listening to other folks telephone calls, but clearly, this isn't the way.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
No, fuck that. It's our moral responsibility to make sure this shit hits every wall in the room.
I doubt that would actually help much. Look how protective they get over secrets and accountability when the only 'cost' is embarassment. Imagine how much energy they would put in to not being accountable if there were actual penalties.
Thought experiment: What if just before we went into Vietnam and Iraq, someone leaked all our intelligence about these countries. There is a good chance the outcry would have stopped these stupid/criminal wars.
...thanks to Edward Snowden.
No, fuck that. It's our moral responsibility to make sure this shit hits every wall in the room.
Right - don't enable the bastards. Does a spook have to spend three days re-installing his PC because some stupid rule says that he has to if he reads a WashPo article? Good, that's three days less that he can be doing other damage.
Somebody give me a "Top Secret" nugget that's been in the MSM for months so I can I can put in my .sig.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'm sorry, but if it's available to all and sundry on the internet, it is no longer secret, let alone Top Secret. The cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle, the train's left the platform, etc.
If institutions fail to adapt to the changing world, that's their problem, not the world's.
It amazes me that conservatives have given Obama such a free pass on all of this so far. Hopefully that changes now.
It amazes me how you or anyone else can see this happen time and time again and still believe that we have two distinct parties.
Jefferson knew what a two-party system would become and specifically warned against it. At some point they both realize they can play the voters in the middle, sort of like "good cop, bad cop". For maximum effect, switch roles once in a while. Then people support a given one for irrational, emotional, tribal, "my team" reasons and stop thinking critically. Take a hard look at the world of US politics and tell me this isn't exactly what's happening. Then make the next tiny leap and understand that someone definitely benefits from this, and it is not accidental.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Slashdot - and other news aggregation websites - should put warning labels on links that go to leaked classified information.
yes, that's it, let's have everyone go out of our way to help those poor souls like you that are helping perpetuate the problem. oh wait, here's a better idea, dont work for criminals or companies that help them.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The problem is that the agency responsible for all that shouldn't be the same agency looking at US citizens.
That's not a moral, or even constitutional issue. It's a management one.
Go through all this data to do any of the things you refer to above are specific tasks. Things no one has a problem with. The problem comes when the NSA has information overload because every AT&T office in the middle of no where has a tap on it. I hope that last statement was just hyperbole, but you get my point.
Terrorism is such a nebulous term in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. It's being used to justify huge amounts of departmental overreach. I want the NSA to watch Russia, and Iran, and North Korea. What I don't want is for them to watch everyone at home. Doing so makes as much institutional sense as replacing policemen with soldiers.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
Like making sure Russia isn't cheating on its ballistic missile treaty obligations? Like looking for North Korea making preparations to launch missiles at Japan? Like Iran assembling a nuclear warhead? I think you have a "funny" idea there, probably more than one.
Your scare tactics don't work on me - I don't live in fear, and America doesn't work when people do (even Francis Scott Key got that right) . Japan can worry about Japan. Russia isn't planning to bomb the world. Iran hasn't started a war with another country in 150 years. If you're afraid of Iran, you should look at the CIA, which even admitted this week to overthrowing its democracy and installing the government that led directly to the Islamic Revolution and the current clusterfuck of a government they have there.
America is not the World Police, but the US intelligence agencies do violate our highest laws (and International law) every single day. We need to take care of our internal problems as our primary responsibility.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
you're completely wrong about Vietnam.
Vietnam started at the request of France. They wanted the US military to help back them up in Vietnam because they were losing control of it [Vietnam being a colony of France at the time]. France turned the revolution in Vietnam into a civil war, with the revolutionaries turning into the VC and the other side becoming our guys. The US was pulled wholesale into the conflict by the NSA and the Johnson administration distorting information around the gulf of tonkin incident.
We started in Vietnam to support France's colonial interests, and went all in because the administration of the time faked intelligence. There was absolutely no misunderstanding of vietnam's internal politics.
No, but they *did* convince people that they were "being rescued" by the end of an assault rifle barrel when being forced to stay in their homes and then forced at gunpoint to get out of their homes for mandatory searches.
I did notice your name on several interesting posts during last 2 weeks, but this time I'm not so sure that you are right.
When talking how Iran menaces it's neighbors it reminds me of this picture. If you say that that Iran threatens the world supply of oil by blocking the Persian Gulf - yes, they do. Does that mean that you can force them to give up their right to control their territorial waters? Do you have some god-given right to that oil or what? Yes, it would cause troubles world wide if they did that. So we just march in and take over the oil reserves? If you say they were involved with Beirut bombing - that was 30 years ago. Move on. There is no point in bringing up that stuff again again - apart from learning from past mistakes. If you describe what USSR/Russia did 50 years ago ... the politicians as well as foreign politics of both USSR and USA changed a lot since that time. When the ballistic rockets start flying, they will fly over my head, not yours - because I live in central Europe. If Russia decides to take out the radar control stations that give information to US rockets, they will hit my country, not yours. Americans seem to be keen on going into military actions around the world - because it is happening far away from them. It is easy to order military strikes when you do that with remote control and drones. When all you see is the footage on CNN. Russia isn't positioning military bases outside of their territory - USA does that. And everybody caves in because of USA power. You are becoming a bully.
America may not be the "World Police," but America has interests around the world. Sure. I'm interested in living like a millionaire sipping mojito on a beach. Does not give me right to force someone to give me their stuff and land.
Don't be mistaken. I'm not supporting Russia/Putin and I'm not supporting Iran developing nuclear weapons nor Syria using chemical weapons. I'm just much closer to the scene and I don't see the world powers trying to resolve the situation with minimum required force.