Inside the 2013 US Intelligence "Black Budget" 271
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."
Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Douglas Adams was right. The presidency does not exist to wield power. The presidency exists to distract attention away from the wielding of power.
Wow... I RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Bomb Syria (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly, they are doing something wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
$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.
Re:Links to classified data should be labeled (Score:5, Insightful)
No, fuck that. It's our moral responsibility to make sure this shit hits every wall in the room.
Re:Clearly, they are doing something wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, I see you're mistake. This budget has absolutely nothing to do with terrorists. As with all government programs its primary goal is in justifying its own existence.
Re:Links to classified data should be labeled (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot - and other news aggregation websites - should put warning labels on links that go to leaked classified information. Some people can get into trouble for viewing it. I love reading it, but some people who read Slashdot work in the classified world and have to work under some of its sillier rules. (Like having to wipe your unclassified work computer because it got Top Secret data on it from the Washington Post.)
You chose to work for the Devil. It turns out, sometimes the Devil wants his due.
That's your problem. So fucking tired of every edge-case person wanting the whole rest of the world to accommodate them. It's self-important entitlement at its finest.
Here's an idea: don't click on links that talking about US intelligence agencies. Simple!
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oversight (Score:5, Insightful)
Too much secrecy, not too little, is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Clearly, they are doing something wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perfectly reasonable statement, but wrong. The goals of the program are being well met -- it's just that you misunderstand the goal, which is really to funnel money into the privatized defence/intelligence community.
May well be the Most Transparent Administration... (Score:5, Insightful)
...thanks to Edward Snowden.
Re:Links to classified data should be labeled (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Links to classified data should be labeled (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:My favorite part (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Links to classified data should be labeled (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Links to classified data should be labeled (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Links to classified data should be labeled (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too much secrecy, not too little, is the proble (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bomb Syria (Score:3, Insightful)
Fool me once (Iraq, Afghanistan), shame on - shame on you.
Fool me (Lybia, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon and so on down the road) -- you can't get fooled again.
Except that, clearly, we can.
Re:Yet they STILL didn't stop Boston (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Links to classified data should be labeled (Score:1, Insightful)
You may not live in fear, but you live in poverty, a poverty of understanding. What I listed isn't scare tactics, but simply issues that have to be faced in the world by the United States. There is no requirement for you to face them, but you shouldn't pretend to understand them when you don't. Trying to pretend that Iran is peaceful when it is one of the key sponsors of terrorism in the world, threatens genocide against Israel, and menaces its neighbors in the region shows you are either badly uninformed, or disingenuous, to be kind. Most of Iran's neighbors are buying large amounts of arms due to Iranian threats. Iraq has been plagued by Iranian agents equipping and training anti-government militias, bribing members of the government, and targeted US and coalition troops trying to restore civil government to Iraq. Iran has been directly linked with terrorist attacks against Americans, including the Beirut bombing [wikipedia.org] that killed 299 American and French soldiers and marines there for peace keeping. Iran has repeatedly threatened to block the Persian Gulf oil routes, a key energy supply for the world, and to cut European petroleum supplies to freeze people in the winter. The "democracy" that you refer to in Iran was gone before the US helped restore the Shah to power. If you trouble yourself to become informed, you will find that the former prime minister had dissolved the legislature, faked an election, was ruling by decree indefinitely, and ignored the last check on his power - the right of a constitutional monarch to dismiss the prime minister. Calling Iran a democracy at the time is a sick joke.
So you claim, "Russia isn't planning to bomb the world"? Who told you? And why do you believe them? Russia has threatened nuclear weapons strikes against NATO for planning to install a limited missile defense against Iran. They have restarted the former Soviet practice of probing American and NATO nation air defenses with nuclear bombers and submarines. They have engaged in practice nuclear strikes against US bases on Guam. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union (of which Russia was the heart) sought US acquiescence to a nuclear decapitation strike they wished to perform against China. The US said NO. I doubt Russian nuclear strategy is much different. They are probably even more reliant upon nuclear weapons for deterrence since the Russian military is a mere shadow of the Soviet military, and reform is faltering. If you have definite knowledge, perhaps you could share it with the American and European defense community?
If you want "Japan to worry about Japan," then you should be ready for a nuclear armed Japan, and terrified neighbors. The Japanese have rockets that they regularly use to orbit satellites, including spy satellites. They have a large and highly competent nuclear industry. They could have ICBMs with nuclear warheads very quickly, if they chose to. The North Koreans and Chinese have already given them incentive. Now, just mix in a little "cultural problem" in that many Japanese don't accept responsibility for waging aggressive war in WW2 and still honor the old ways, and the ingredients of trouble are assembled. Add to that the intense resentment held by many of Japans neighbors to its actions in WW2, and the brew is starting. Stir the pot with a growing movement to rewrite the Japanese "peace constitution" to remove its restrictions on using force, and the neighbors start getting nervous. Those nervous neighbors will buy more weapons and may poison the atmosphere with Japan. South Korea might very well arm with nuclear weapons too given a nuclear armed North Korea, China, and Japan. (And a "Japan looks out for Japan" policy that also implies a "South Korea looks out for South Korea.") The South Koreans already have brand new cruise missiles to fit them on. But hey! No worries! It's not like the economies of Japan, South Korea, China, and the US are related in any way, right?
America may not b
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
People tend to vastly overestimate how much defacto power a president has.
Why do people on Slashdot keep saying this? The POTUS really does hold ultimate power over the Executive Branch of the US Government, which includes the DoD and the DNI agencies. I get that we want to think he doesn't know or that he's just some dupe, but he's not. (It reminds me of how Soviet citizens in the '30s would look at terrible abuses or atrocities - usually specifically approved by Stalin - and often say, "If only Stalin knew!")
Anyone who has spent much time around the government in DC can tell you that, yes, defense companies and lobbyists wield a lot of influence over the Legislative Branch... but they're not really in charge of the National Security apparatus - the president is. And he's not some patsy. The sad truth about these activities is that he knows about them and he thinks they're OK.
Maybe he's right that they do actually stop terrorist attacks, maybe he's just letting these programs continue because he doesn't want to look "soft" on terrorism or get blamed if there's another attack. I don't know and neither do you. But either way please don't delude yourself that the POTUS has not 100% approved what the intelligence community's big initiatives and scope of surveillance are.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Insightful)
That's President Obama. Now, if you were to quote Senator Obama, your point would be valid. You want to know how much he is a pawn? Military action against Syria will happen between next Saturday night and Tuesday morning. He will take action, as Presidents before him have, while Congress is in recess. He has until the 9th. This will be the main focus of his Presidential Address on Sunday; justifying the legality and U.S. interest in doing so. He'll pull at liberal heart strings.
This has been planned for the past 15 years now just like the Iraq war was. U.S. and Britain (primarily) won't miss their chance even though there is more evidence to counter the claim Assad used chemical weapons. They're manufacturing evidence.
The Elites need the Syrian pipeline and this is their chance to take it.
(Did I mention the U.S. and NATO have been funding the destabilization of Syria for the past four years?)
Next stop: Iran
Re:Links to classified data should be labeled (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [thetruthseeker.co.uk]. 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 [rt.com] 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.
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Further digging indicates that the DoD has effectively been unaccountable even since before 2001.
Actually, they've arguably been unaccountable since about 1935 or so during the run-up to that little problem in Europe and the Pacific. Dwight Eisenhower was warning the country about it back when he was president. There have been numerous documented cases of the DoD and intelligence agencies flat-out lying to presidents and legislators when it suited their interests, and never being called to account for that.