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Comment by rgbrenner | Hacker News Reader

I wasn't surprised (the CIA ran the drone program), but apparently it is a common myth that the NSA is larger.

More importantly though.. what purpose does leaking this serve? It shows nothing illegal, or even questionable. It has nothing to do with the documents leaked previously. I just don't understand why he thought this needed to be leaked.

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> More importantly though.. what purpose does leaking this serve? It shows nothing illegal, or even questionable. It has nothing to do with the documents leaked previously. I just don't understand why he thought this needed to be leaked.

Maybe it's about taxpayers knowing where their dollars are going? First you show that your government is spying on you, and then you show how much of your own money that costs..?

If it were $100b+ or some other outrageous number, then perhaps... but the CIA is $14.7b.. It's a drop in the bucket in the budget. It's even less than NASA, and you can see how much the general public cares about that.

"No single raindrop believes it is responsible for the flood".

Similarly what singled out line item in the budget isn't just a "drop in the bucket" when compared to the entirety of the government budget? Just because some program or item doesn't "cost" much compared to everything combined doesn't mean we shouldn't scrutinize spending money on it.

The armed forces, or interest payments would be pretty substantial all by themselves. (And so would social security, probably, but I don't know enough about the USA to make that comment.)

The armed services as a whole is large... continue breaking it down into finer line items and soon... it's just a bunch of "drops in the bucket".

ADD: interest payments is probably large too and more difficult to break into smaller lines... so let's quickly scrutinize that item... "Yeah, we probably should continue to make those payments unless we want everyone to lose trust in the U.S. backed dollar."

Yes. So if you want to scrutinize the budget, you should prioritize by cost / value instead of by cost alone.

Well, it is less expensive to build data-centers and tap fiber-optic lines than to send rockets to orbit and probes to Mars... (especially the way NASA does it compared to, say, SpaceX.. but that's another discussion)

But in any case, I think it's fine to get these numbers public because it's still taxpayer money. I think it would've been worse of Snowden NOT to release numbers just because they aren't as shocking as they could've been.

Transparency should be about showing you what's there, not about cherry-picking things to form a narrative that distorts what is there.

"A whistleblower is a person who exposes misconduct, alleged dishonest or illegal activity occurring in an organization." [0]

I support Snowden, but this document is none of those things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower

None of what he has released qualifies him as a whistleblower, because it is classified information (which has strictly regulated ways to handle impropriety) and the activities are not illegal (ignoring tenuous Constitution arguments).

I am sorry, but even if you absolutely ignore everything else, Clapper's lying to Congress was illegal. He has also exposed the fact that NSA has violated the constitution many times.

What is "classified" anyways? Some guy sitting somewhere decides that it is "classified". So why can't some other guy decide that it is in the public interest to not classify it?

So, a court already declared it illegal, and one of the things he leaked was information about illegal things NSA admitted it has done...

How it is not illegal?

Perhaps there is more to be understood here: Snowden didn't blow the whistle on the US Government, he blew the whistle on the US People, and what they have allowed their government to become.

Big difference.

If it was the only thing he ever released, I would agree with you. But in the context of what has been shown before, I think it fits for reasons I stated up-thread.

Is your argument that because the wikipedia definition of whistleblower seems to exclude this type of disclosure, it doesn't qualify as whistleblowing? If someone amended the wikipedia definition to include "disclosures of information which is of a compelling nature and of significant interest to the voting public", would you change your opinion?

Shouldn't the question of the value of this disclosure be determined on its merits (does its value in furthering democracy outweigh any potential harm), not whether or not it qualifies under some dictionary definition?

You have an issue with the wikipedia definition?

http://www.whistleblower.org/about/what-is-a-whistleblower

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/government_e...

https://www.gov.uk/whistleblowing/overview

https://www.internationalwhistleblowers.com/contact-iwb/800-...

http://definitions.uslegal.com/w/whistleblowers-law/

http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&t...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/10/190380255/wha...

Pick whatever definition you want. This document doesn't fit it.

I think it is quite clear that he is not saying his quarrel is with dictionary definitions. You should [re]read what he wrote, particularly the second paragraph of it.

Well who uses all the spy satellites because its the air force that pays for them.

The ~$50B black budget is well over 1% of federal spending ($3.8T says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budg... ). Considerably more than a drop.

Taxpayer dollars get returned to the issuer. It's like asking where all your movie tickets are going.

Because there is no reason for it to be secret?

Bull-pucky. Seeing budgets can give foreign governments a very good idea of how many people work there, what sorts of equipment is being bought, etc.

These are allocations on the size of multi-billion dollars, it can not give anybody an idea "what sorts of equipment is being bought". And the information that the NSA employs tens of thousands of employees is likewise useless.

No, this should obviously not be classified.

Planes that cost in the billions? Equipment for the government is never cheap, mostly because they can't get economies of scale pricing. And not to mention that year-to-year changes can give you excellent information too. For example: say last year they spent $10b, and this year they spent $20b -- holy crap they clearly expanded something or bought some crazy expensive gear.

It's an intelligence agency. Most of what they do should be classified.

> Most of what they do should be classified.

Which leads to the current abuses.

Here's a thought. We don't need them and they do much more harm than good. They didn't protect us against 9/11, mislead us into Iraq, took 10 years to capture Osama Bin Laden, didn't foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union, and now are mucking about with Syrian "rebels" (and indirectly supporting Al-Qaeda) fomenting the start of WWIII.

If they just didn't exist we would all be safer and we'd get to keep more money. By falsely leading us into war in Iraq for absolutely nothing, they effectively cost the US over $10^12. The cost of the CIA and other agencies is much higher than their yearly cost. They can't even manage their sys admins, why should we trusting them so much?

You might be surprised what an intelligence agency can tell you about your country based off of those "larger" indicators. Especially when tied to other data points. Knowing what another state is capable of is by far the most important part of intelligence gathering.

The DIA has models to determine food supplies in China based off of the number of farm tractors and price fluctuations of dog food in the USA. It amazing how accurate they are considering the data points.

Really isn't a question of whether the information is a security risk or not. It is a question of freedom vs security.

Foreign governments already know this.

i would guess this decision depends on many details - it's going to involve weighing costs v benefits of making available for public inspection. the risks don't seem huge for a budget doc (compared to something with more operational details) while there are already possible gains - this report suggests that the CIA has misled the public, for example http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/dna-test-verified...

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