

U.S. spy network’s successes, failures and objectives detailed in ‘black budget’ - shakes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html

======
spoiledtechie
I like the first comment in the info graph...

->>> 1) Chester PA has a homicide rate of 62 per 100,000. Camden NJ is almost as bad. US male suicide rate has soared to 19.9 per 100,000. Black unemployment has averaged 15% for the past 5 years and the real median income for black households has collapsed to barely above what it was in 1970.

The most deadly threat to many Americans is not foreign terrorists -- it is
the corruption of our ruling elites in Washington DC. They have long shown
that they serve the agendas of the billionaires --not the national interest of
the American People.

~~~
astrange
The most deadly threat to many Americans is car crashes.

~~~
ajross
That's the number one cause of "accidental" death (and hoo boy does it
outweigh "the corruption of our ruling elites").

If you want to look at "preventable" deaths instead then lack of exercise and
smoking are far more existential threats still:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_preventable_causes_of_d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_preventable_causes_of_death)

Basically: all the huffing being done on both sides of the argument is (if you
really care about keeping people out of graves) just statistical noise.

Which of course brings up the much deeper point: people don't so much care
about the "death" thing, really. It's just a convenient hat hanger for
whatever agenda they want to push. The anarchists do it just as badly as the
authoritarians.

Eat your veggies, people.

~~~
olefoo
Given that the automobile industry was a major source of wealth for most of
the past century; it's safe to say that it's cultural primacy is part and
parcel of the corruption of our elites. Automobile deaths in this country are
predictably higher than in Germany an equally wealthy country. And they are so
because we have a number of entrenched interests (construction, auto sales and
manufacturing, lawyers, trauma surgeons; etc. ) that get and stay rich because
the status quo is car oriented.

You want bikes, light rail and walkable cities? You adorable little euro-
commie wannabe!

------
revscat
> In words, deeds and dollars, intelligence agencies remain fixed on terrorism
> as the gravest threat to national security, which is listed first among five
> “mission objectives.”

Why?

I understand the tragedy of 9/11\. With that in mind, it is a mistake is to
treat terrorism as an existential threat to the state. Perhaps someone with a
more formal background in history can speak to this, but I do not think there
is an example of a nation falling because of terrorism.

Point: there is a widespread purported belief in western democracies,
particularly the United States and Great Britain, that one or more terrorist
attacks could cause institutional collapse. This is ridiculous, however well-
intentioned it might have started out as being.

~~~
jivatmanx
Indeed, the current threat from terrorism has no significant differences from
that of 19th century violent anarchism. Those who argue that "9/11 changed
everything" play upon an ignorance of history to achieve their own purposes.

~~~
astrobe_
It changed everything in US people minds. Hollywood and TV shows were
presenting the US victorious always. 9/11 showed that the homeland isn't safe
from everything. That was the second shock wave that is still propagating more
than one decade after.

Compare and contrast with European countries (France, GB, Spain) that
experienced throughout the end of the 20th century terrorist attacks,
including bombings, on their own ground.

Truth is, we don't know what would happen if they strike again. And maybe,
perhaps, that's what the US government and its agencies want to avoid at any
cost. Does the end justify the means?

------
NelsonMinar
This leak may be the most significant from Snowden yet. As the article notes,
until 2007 even the total amount of the budget was considered a secret.
There's no precedent for American journalists having access to all this detail
on our intelligence spending.

I wish the article had more detail on "offensive cyber operations". AFAIK
there's very little known in public about US active cyberwarfare.

~~~
fossuser
We do know a lot about stuxnet - I would guess that's one of the major ones.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-
ord...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-
of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

~~~
yk
And Flame [1] and Duqu [2]. There is of course a lot of technical discussion,
but not much about the organizational side of things. So we do not know for
example, how the NSA obtains 0days.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_%28malware%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_%28malware%29)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duqu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duqu)

~~~
milkshakes
Endgame Systems

[https://media.blackhat.com/us-13/US-13-Hanif-Binarypig-
Scala...](https://media.blackhat.com/us-13/US-13-Hanif-Binarypig-Scalable-
Malware-Analytics-in-Hadoop-Slides.pdf)

------
Zelphyr
> The United States has spent more than $500 billion on intelligence during
> that period, an outlay that U.S. officials say has succeeded in its main
> objective: preventing another catastrophic terrorist attack in the United
> States.

We hadn't had a catastrophic terrorist attack even approaching 9/11 prior to
that date. And I'm guessing we've spent more in the past 12 on "preventing
terrorism" than we had in the 225 years prior to 9/11.

My point: we may have overreacted.

~~~
marshray
In my lifetime there have been plenty of plane hijackings and bombings that
killed hundreds of Americans. They just mostly weren't on continental US soil.

~~~
Zelphyr
"hundreds of Americans" Key point here. Hundreds of Americans over the course
of decades.

Meanwhile millions died from heart disease, auto accidents, kidney disease,
pneumonia, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, lung disease, and cancer, just last year.

More people died of heart disease in this country alone last year than have
died by airline hijacking since the invention of manned flight.

------
csmatt
“Our budgets are classified as they could provide insight for foreign
intelligence services to discern our top national priorities, capabilities and
sources and methods that allow us to obtain information to counter threats”

So you don't want anyone to look at your metadata?

~~~
marshray
They're just business records after all, often with nongovernmental
corporations. No expectation of privacy there, nope.

------
ihsw
All of this points directly to the US Government's continued rivalry with the
Chinese Government, especially the emphasis on secrecy and authoritarianism.

One has to wonder if this is the same strategy used to bring down the Soviets,
namely a war of attrition where one tries to out-spend an opponent through
consistent escalation -- until the opponent runs out of resources to maintain
the escalation. We know how that ended.

~~~
tokenadult
_One has to wonder if this is the same strategy used to bring down the
Soviets, namely a war of attrition where one tries to out-spend an opponent
through consistent escalation -- until the opponent runs out of resources to
maintain the escalation. We know how that ended._

Your sentence right at the end of the quoted paragraph from your comment
prompts me to check whether you are writing ironically or at face value. Do
you think the United States succeeded in bringing down the Soviet Union by
outcompeting it?

~~~
swombat
Yes. As I understand it from my readings, the US developed a deliberate
strategy of investing in things (like submarines, or the "star wars" defence
system, etc) which would cause disproportionate investment on the other side
to match them - ideally investment that would not help the offensive
capability of the USSR. It switched to this model from the previous model
which was to match USSR expenses (e.g. they buy more nukes, we buy more nukes
too). This was deliberately designed to leverage the fact that the US economy
was stronger and more flexible, and amplify that.

According to "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" (great book) this was the result of
a paper written in the 1970s where this strategy was conceived, which was then
adopted by the US military as its main strategy against the Soviet.

~~~
alex_anglin
In a more modern context, this sounds very much like the spending associated
with countering IEDs by western governments.

~~~
swombat
Couldn't agree more. The entire middle eastern military venture is an exercise
in spending billions to try and counter a threat that costs thousands.

------
swalsh
I don't imagine this is the kind of thing that shows up in a System
Administrators inbox every Tuesday. Origionally I was just assuming that
Snowden was publishing the information he himself received.

He would have had to surf deeper into the system for this kind of information
I assume. I can't even imagine what else is on those hard drives.

~~~
pvnick
Looks like he actually impersonated officials with higher access:
[http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/29/20234171-...](http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/29/20234171-snowden-
impersonated-nsa-officials-sources-say)

Snowden appears to be have acted brilliantly. We couldn't have asked for a
better protagonist here. Personally, I think that, since he knew what he was
going to do, he took _everything_ within his grasp. Especially since he knew
he had nothing to lose.

------
peterkelly
"The NSA planned to investigate at least 4,000 possible insider threats in
2013, cases in which the agency suspected sensitive information may have been
compromised by one of its own"

Assuming that each insider threat corresponds to one employee, and that the
total number of employees in the intelligence community is 107,035, this would
suggest that at least 1 out of every 27 employees has been considered a
possible insider threat. And if you were to only consider the employee count
of the NSA itself (which we don't know), it would be considerably higher.

This is... pretty staggering.

~~~
olefoo
The side effect of that level of paranoia is that office politics becomes an
extreme sport. If you can make it look like the guy angling for the same
promotion as you has a secret; or is actively selling out the country...

It may also explain some of the institutional rigidity we see in the IC's
response to events. If questioning certain assumptions may get you not just
fired, but jailed; and you value your career and your freedom, those
assumptions become very hard to question. (e.g. the same assumptions that Mr.
Snowden started questioning )

------
olefoo
"Enterprise IT" and "Enterprise Management" are broken out as two separate
categories for both the CIA and the NSA. Is one of those the asset spend (
software, hardware etc. ) for non-mission-tasked items and the other the
personnel spend for people who keep the place going?

And it would interesting to see a breakdown by category of how much is spent
on outside contractors ( like Booz Allen Hamilton ) vs. how much is spent in
direct personnel costs ( federal employees with benefits and pensions etc. ).

~~~
samstave
It was reported that Booz revenue is ~$5.5 BILLION, most of which is direct
defense contracting.

> __ _As of 2013, 99% of the company 's revenue comes from the Federal
> government._ __

\---

>Key Facts Founded 1914 Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, USA NYSE: BAH
Employees: More than 24,000 Revenue: $5.76 billion in fiscal year 2013
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer: Ralph W. Shrader, Ph.D. Web site:
www.boozallen.com

\---

[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=boo...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=booz+allen+5+billion&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

\---

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton)

~~~
olefoo
I wonder how much of a picture of the outsourced parts of the black budget
could be assembled by going through EDGAR filings.

[http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-
edgar?CIK=BAH&Find=Search&...](http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-
edgar?CIK=BAH&Find=Search&owner=exclude&action=getcompany)

I'm not that familiar with deciphering EDGAR filings, but if you correlated it
to [http://www.usaspending.gov/](http://www.usaspending.gov/) and other
sources...

Who knows what you might find out.

It would make a neat data-journalism project for someone; would that I had the
time.

~~~
samstave
The black budget is far far higher than 52B... I recall previous exposures on
the black budget - and they were much higher... let me see if I can dig
anything up..

------
marshray
So combining this with Wikipedia, it seems that Clapper and his 1749
underlings at ODNI cost us an _average_ of $971,000 a year _EACH_.

Ostensibly their mission is to advise the President, head some panels, oversee
some stuff, and some stuff about whistleblowers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intellige...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence)

------
mrt0mat0
there is sooo much information in this one... i skimmed it three times... the
article itself is long, then there's the infographics. geez. makes you wonder
what other information he had.

I also want to thank the post for turning the data into nice interactive
infographics instead of posting "crayola quality" powerpoints, that the gov is
known for using.

------
rthomas6
Why is this information useful? I get the whistleblowing about the NSA spying
on US citizens. I don't understand the purpose of exposing the US's
intelligence budget. What is Snowden whistleblowing on by publishing this
information? What does it add to the discussion about the government abusing
its power or infringing upon civil liberties?

------
devx
>The CIA and NSA have launched aggressive new efforts to hack into foreign
computer networks to steal information or sabotage enemy systems, embracing
what the budget refers to as “offensive cyber operations.”

Not just "enemy" systems. But "targets'" systems, which include a lot more
_allies_ than "enemies". Then again, US seems to have a very Cold War-like
mentality these days (even though Obama accused Russia of that), and sees
everyone as a potential "enemy".

As Bruce Schneier said a couple of years ago, if you think "cyber-war" is
imminent, then you must think _war_ against US is imminent (which seems pretty
unlikely right now, but they keep pushing the fear of cyber-war anyway, to
increase their budgets).

