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Maybe this is a dumb question, but within the whole of the intelligence community, who/how many people actually see how big the surveillance operation is? Is it
by edge17 11y ago
Maybe this is a dumb question, but within the whole of the intelligence community, who/how many people actually see how big the surveillance operation is? Is it just the one guy at the top of the NSA that knows about all the eyes and ears in the kingdom?
I would imagine, based on compartmentalization, the people involved in individual parts of all the machinery only have limited knowledge of the other things going on.
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoNo single person, has full purview and that is by design. Even the President likely doesn't know every program comprehensively, not for lack of access but because it's so large that it would be hard to get all of it in such detail.
- edge17 11y agoI'm not following... I would assume at the very least the top guy at the NSA has a full view of all operations. As the top intelligence officer, I would assume it's his job to know where all the tentacles are?
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoWell, to be clear the DIRNSA is not the "top intelligence officer." Technically that role is held by James Clapper as the Director for National Intelligence (DNI). It's also more complicated than just appointing someone as the head of "Intelligence" because most of the directors of the Intelligence Agencies guard a lot from each other so they don't get resources nabbed. Prior to the formation of the DNI role, the "Top Spy" was the Director for Central Intelligence (DCI) AkA Director of the CIA - who had outsized pull and purview. Today there is a push and pull between the DNI and DCI, at the presidential level. Long story short, it's complicated and very very large.