[omd]

It seems beyond outrageous to me. 200k news articles is the amount of news that is produced by 7 billion people in 200 countries worldwide. Those 50k reports is what comes out of counter terrorism by one just of those countries. That's not including the usual declassified military or police reports. There is 1 person for every 400 Americans producing and/or reading these reports. That is more than the total amount of law enforcement officers in the entire US. Tracking every email in and out of the US which seemed impossible before, seems rather trivial now.

[rayiner]

> 200k news articles is the amount of news that is produced by 7 billion people in 200 countries worldwide. Those 50k reports is what comes out of counter terrorism by one just of those countries.

Right, but those 50k reports are about the activities happening among those 7 billion people in 200 countries. And many of those 200k news articles published by the NYT have a corresponding intelligence angle that is covered in the report. Remember, NYT only covers major world news, and a lot of intelligence reports are mundane things like "what is the intelligence impact of this new Russian oil pipeline?"

> There is 1 person for every 400 Americans producing and/or reading these reports.

Where do you get that number? That 830,000 number from the article is for people with top secret clearance. That includes everyone from intelligence analysts to military officers to scientists working on sensitive research.

[hga]

Unless you're in intelligence an officer's basic clearance is only Secret.

But the point stands. One of the people I've provided personal references for a TS/SCI first did work for the National Reconnaissance Office (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office):

"The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), located in Chantilly, Virginia, is one of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and considered, along with the CIA, NSA, DIA and NGA, to be one of the "big five" U.S. Intelligence agencies. It designs, builds, and operates the spy satellites of the United States government, and coordinates the analysis of aerial surveillance and satellite imagery from several intelligence and military agencies."

3,000 direct employees, plus many contractors like the above mentioned friend. Is the NRO any bigger because of 9/11 et. al.? Probably somewhat, but not all that much I suspect given how much they were doing before it. What he was doing was just supporting their general efforts. (His following jobs? Well, as usual I can tell you what technology they used, but nothing about them, they're more sensitive, so maybe he became part of this growing post-9/11 "hidden world".)