Posted on 06/07/2013 5:29:34 AM PDT by MosesKnows
How much did the electronic collection hardware cost?
How much did the data storage hardware cost?
How much did the network hardware cost?
How much did the network software cost?
How much did it cost to create a searchable database?
How much did it cost to enter the collected data?
How much did it cost to maintain the database?
How much did it cost to staff the entire effort?
How much does it cost to protect the network from hackers?
Some future questions that beg answers … who has access to the database, how much will this data collection cost in the future, and which agency funded the effort?
Bet it costs a lot more than protecting our border and only allowing friendlies in.
What would it cost the federal governmen?
Calculate how much it would cost a company in the private sector to do it.
Budget for 100 times that amount.
Be prepared for huge cost overruns.
they already have the systems and personnel in place. that includes the systems at telcos as well as the analytics systems and databases. this is mostly incremental costs for storage and processing extra data - both of which are cheap. The analytics is a matter of prioritization so they likely didn’t increase compute capabilities, just deprioritized something else.
it is very expensive to build and staff the infrastructure as you said. but if it didn’t already exist, it wouldn’t be working already based on a court order from a month ago (it would be years to implement).
Most of it is being done by contractors aka the private sector.
Spend a hour watching Top Secret America on Frontline at the PBS website. That originally aired in 2011 then they updated it to include the Boston bombings and re-released it a few weeks ago.
BTW, how much it costs is top secret.
Plus you have to budget for a monstrous, bloated government bureaucracy on top of the contract costs.
Every government activity is also an opportunity to create more busywork government bureaucracies and jobs.
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