If you think the NSA isn’t a bureaucracy, you’re mistaken.
If you think the NSA plays by the same rules as other typical bureaucracies, then you’re very mistaken.
I’m quite certain they are just as inefficient as other organizations like the CIA and FBI
The facts don’t support your certainty. And, it’s not realistic to compare the CIA (and their shadow government budgetary and bureaucratic concerns) with that of the FBI, much less comparing the NSA to the FBI.
$70M for expenses for a project for which all the staff
I think you’re locked into a different time paradigm than our current reality. In today’s reality a handful of talented people can run and fully operate a tech company that serves hundreds of millions and is worth multi-billions. The 70 million in question is dedicated to one project, not an entire organization and all facilities.
A handful of hackers and administrators without legal limitations (that normals in the business world have to deal with) isn’t going to require the same budget (not even close) for a solitary, offensive security project.
Also, with today’s technology the costs for nationwide and worldwide operations are rapidly narrowing. You also need to realize the extreme value of the business and political secrets they have access to that creates a black budget ROI that’s priceless for the people directly involved along with their corporatist superiors.
Our public government bureaucracy (that is, what little of it that can actually reach and affect the shadow government’s NSA) is going to be paid for elsewhere with public funds, not directly by the project nor even the NSA itself in many circumstances. You’re trying to compare shadow government with typical government bureaucracies. They are two very different animals.
Go seriously fuck with the Department of Transportation and then with the CIA’s or NSA’s shadow government as a politician or otherwise. See which of those “bureaucracies” has the power to destroy your career or even your life if you keep it up, much less have the same costly oversight concerns. Once again, they are vastly different animals.
security services are not exempted from this; indeed, they are even worse than average
Not all security services are the same. It is much less expensive to operate offensive security services than it is to operate defensive security services.
The NSA is decidedly far more focused on the former than the latter.
This is a problem with establishing the importance of all this leaked information.
Your inability to grasp the accounting, bureaucratic, and operational differences between something like the Department of Labor and shadow government has nothing to do with the quality and veracity of the leaks. Once again, see my mafia analogy in my previous post.
Without actually being in the organization, there is no real way to tell which projects are just powerpoint and which are real
If the leaks were fake, it’s already been proven that the government would jump all over it to help disparage people like Snowden and Greenwald.
As a matter of fact, quasi-governmental entities have already been busted for planning that very strategy against Wikileaks, Greenwald, etc.
If you’ve got some evidence that the leaks are fake and/or are simply plans that were never enacted (despite the fact that there’s evidence to the contrary), then I’d like to see it.
