US security agencies paying companies for covert data gathering programmes

Anew report by the Washington Post has shed some light on just how much money the US government is spending on its mass-surveillance programmes. The NSA is reportedly shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars a year to various US companies for secret access to their communications grid. And this access includes weeding through massive amounts of traffic for foreign targets using a process that also ropes in huge amounts of telephone calls, e-mails and instant messages.

The total budget, termed by the source as "Black Budget" is staggering, with the US government having spent $52.6 billion since 2004 on covert surveillence programmes. Agencies like the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency have contributed to this amount by shelling out $10.8 billion and $14.7 billion respectively, in that period. 
 
According to a multi-volume intelligence budget obtained by the source, the most amount of money is spent on participants in a Corporate Partner Access Project for major US telecommunication providers. What is worrisome to note is that, despite having massive amounts of funding, security agencies are still unable to gather important data pertaining to a range of national security threats. 
 
According to the spending sheet for the fiscal year of 2013, the agency is tapping into the “high volume circuit and packet-switched networks.” The report indicates that the programme was expected to cost $278 million in the current fiscal year. The programme had, in 2011, peaked out at $394 million, the highest the agency has ever spent, according to the report.

Newly leaked slides shows the codenames that corporate projects were given (Image credit: The Washington Post)

The intelligence budget report shows that cooperation with the main providers of global communications goes as far back as the 1970s. One of the projects functioned under the cover name BLARNEY, according to documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The scary part is that these mutually-beneficial relations have been around long before the PRISM programme came to light in June. 

In leaked briefing slides, the NSA has shown how BLARNEY and three other corporate projects, codenamed OAKSTAR, FAIRVIEW and STORMBREW worked by capturing data across fibre-optic cables and gateways that direct global communications traffic. While all companies need to stick to lawful surveillance orders, the multi-million dollar payments can serve as a strong spur to offer more than the required assistance to government agencies. 
 
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre, told the source that, “It turns surveillance into a revenue stream, and that’s not the way it’s supposed to work. The fact that the government is paying money to telephone companies to turn over information that they are compelled to turn over is very troubling.”