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The whole thing doesn't make any sense to me. I can understand that governments may have shadowy departments doing illegal things we don't know about, but the w

The whole thing doesn't make any sense to me. I can understand that governments may have shadowy departments doing illegal things we don't know about, but the whole scope of Prism seems to be too wide. When people talk about it, they describe computer systems I couldn't even begin to imagine, let alone design. Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year. I just don't believe it's technically possible. Add to this the emphasis by all parties on Snowden and his shenanigans, and I'm just left confused.

Amadou 13y ago
> Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year. I just don't believe it's technically possible. That's because it is not possible. The $20M/year number is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg for one little program that seems to be more like the GUI on top of the data from all the other programs. The NSA alone has a budget on the order of $10B/year - the entire (american) "intelligence-industrial complex" is estimated to be around $50B/year.
mpyne 13y ago
> Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year. PRISM is nowhere near 'spying on all traffic', which is how NSA was able to do it for $20M a year.