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Wal-Mart has more employees, is it more powerful? Number of employees is a negative metric. It means the NSA has less ostensible secret bribe money. Throwing u

Wal-Mart has more employees, is it more powerful? Number of employees is a negative metric. It means the NSA has less ostensible secret bribe money. Throwing up a big number is dazzling, but when you look at what the NSA does with that $10B, there is a limit. For example, the supposed 40k employees already eat up $3.2B, assuming an extremely charitable average fully-loaded cost of $80k per employee. Including facilities and supercomputer costs, this rapidly dwindles. That leaves maybe $5B for bribes, according to your accounting. Is that enough to subvert everybody? > they are certainly not a "passive" intelligence agency What is this addressing? Are you attempting to change the goal posts? The topic is ostensible unlimited NSA resources to corrupt every proprietary technology.

ekianjo 9y ago
> Wal-Mart has more employees, is it more powerful? I doubt wal-mart has as many highly educated employees as the NSA. Numbers don't mean anything by themselves, but if you hire thousands of mathematicians they are bound to deliver more than Wal-Mart in the datascience and cryptography department. > Including facilities and supercomputer costs, this rapidly dwindles. Well, considering the overall surveillance budget of all secret agencies constantly increases, it does not seem that they will ever lack funding. > That leaves maybe $5B for bribes, according to your accounting. Is that enough to subvert everybody? Why would you need bribes when you have the Law and the full might of government power behind you? If you can convict of high treason anybody who speaks publicly about what the NSA does, why would anyone at Google, Microsoft or other companies working with the NSA have any incentive to say anything? > The topic is ostensible unlimited NSA resources to corrupt every proprietary technology. Resources is not only money. When you work for the government (and furthermore of the military establishment), as I said earlier, you can bring down a whole new level of pressure that money itself cannot buy. If that were not the case, then a bunch of secrets (take for example everything related to nuclear testing in the US) that were only revealed way, way after the facts, would have emerged much earlier in all likelihood.
- linkregister 9y ago
  > If you can convict of high treason anybody who speaks publicly about what the NSA does, why would anyone at Google, Microsoft or other companies working with the NSA have any incentive to say anything? This is where your rhetoric is getting ahead of the facts. The Snowden leaks were published in American newspapers. Company officers from each of those businesses publicly berated the NSA. FBI national security letters did force companies to disclose information about foreign intelligence targets, but this is not because of secret NSA powers, it's from a law passed by Congress. > When you work for the government (and furthermore of the military establishment), as I said earlier, you can bring down a whole new level of pressure that money itself cannot buy. What does the military have to do with Software-as-a-Service providers? Can you name an instance when the modern military provided a chilling effect or seriously impacted these services?
  - cyphar 9y ago
    > This is where your rhetoric is getting ahead of the facts. The Snowden leaks were published in American newspapers. Snowden is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act, the reporters were threatened repeatedly by the authorities, The Guardian was forced to destroy their copies of the Snowden Archives, etc etc. Also, just because the "secret NSA power" of National Security Letters are a tool made legal by Congress doesn't change the ethics concerns relating to their use.

ekianjo 9y ago

> Wal-Mart has more employees, is it more powerful? I doubt wal-mart has as many highly educated employees as the NSA. Numbers don't mean anything by themselves, but if you hire thousands of mathematicians they are bound to deliver more than Wal-Mart in the datascience and cryptography department. > Including facilities and supercomputer costs, this rapidly dwindles. Well, considering the overall surveillance budget of all secret agencies constantly increases, it does not seem that they will ever lack funding. > That leaves maybe $5B for bribes, according to your accounting. Is that enough to subvert everybody? Why would you need bribes when you have the Law and the full might of government power behind you? If you can convict of high treason anybody who speaks publicly about what the NSA does, why would anyone at Google, Microsoft or other companies working with the NSA have any incentive to say anything? > The topic is ostensible unlimited NSA resources to corrupt every proprietary technology. Resources is not only money. When you work for the government (and furthermore of the military establishment), as I said earlier, you can bring down a whole new level of pressure that money itself cannot buy. If that were not the case, then a bunch of secrets (take for example everything related to nuclear testing in the US) that were only revealed way, way after the facts, would have emerged much earlier in all likelihood.

linkregister 9y ago
> If you can convict of high treason anybody who speaks publicly about what the NSA does, why would anyone at Google, Microsoft or other companies working with the NSA have any incentive to say anything? This is where your rhetoric is getting ahead of the facts. The Snowden leaks were published in American newspapers. Company officers from each of those businesses publicly berated the NSA. FBI national security letters did force companies to disclose information about foreign intelligence targets, but this is not because of secret NSA powers, it's from a law passed by Congress. > When you work for the government (and furthermore of the military establishment), as I said earlier, you can bring down a whole new level of pressure that money itself cannot buy. What does the military have to do with Software-as-a-Service providers? Can you name an instance when the modern military provided a chilling effect or seriously impacted these services?
- cyphar 9y ago
  > This is where your rhetoric is getting ahead of the facts. The Snowden leaks were published in American newspapers. Snowden is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act, the reporters were threatened repeatedly by the authorities, The Guardian was forced to destroy their copies of the Snowden Archives, etc etc. Also, just because the "secret NSA power" of National Security Letters are a tool made legal by Congress doesn't change the ethics concerns relating to their use.