[twinge]

Add on top of that the PRISM program only costs $20m/year. There is just no way a massive nationwide clandestine fiber tap collecting data from companies moving petabytes a day between datacenters can cost a mere $20m/year.

The thing that is most frustrating about this leak is we only get 4 slides out of a 41 slide deck, and are left to fill the gaps with paranoid worst-case assumptions. And the Internet is a great echo chamber of paranoid assumptions.

[jlgreco]

Well, we also don't know if PRISM is piggybacking on another, possibly far more expensive system (the hypothetical hardware could already be in place, and under the budget of another far more expensive program).

Really, we just don't know. We don't know anything, except that it sure seems that something is going on. The documents are not getting the same treatment as the fabricated documents of a raving lunatic anonymous coward on Slashdot.

It seems fairly prudent to assume the worse case scenario, better safe than sorry, but it is important to not confuse that assumption with knowledge.

[jessaustin]

If they're going to lie about the existence of the program, I don't see why they can't lie about how much it costs too.

[twinge]

The program cost comes directly from the slides: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg

[marshray]

And everything the NSA puts on Powerpoint about its own budget is true?

[wavefunction]

I guess it depends on the audience the presentation is intended for, but if it's internal I'd hope they weren't lying to themselves.

[marshray]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/former-nsa-empl...

Dr. Charlie Miller, former NSA global network exploitation analyst, @0xcharlie: While I was at the NSA (2000-2005) we were told it was against the law to spy on Americans and if you did it you'd be terminated. In retrospect, it was going on even then. I'm not surprised the heads there lie to Americans, but I'm surprised they lied even to their own employees.