USA To Internet Companies: "We pay you because we know it is illegal"

[kpete]

The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid

[limpyhobbler]

1. sweet slush fund dude

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Or: Major internet companies sold customer data for a profit.

Sounds like a win-win for everyone but us.

[Sunlei]

3. so how much of the paid contractors work was declaired 'unconstitutional" ?

[hedda_foil]

4. More ... buried at the end of the article

[blockquoteThe judgment revealed that the NSA was collecting up to 56,000 wholly US internet communications per year in the three years until the court intervened. Bates also rebuked the agency for misrepresenting the true scope of a major collection program for the third time in three years.

The NSA newsletters say the agency's response to the ruling was to work on a "conservative solution in which higher-risk collection would be sequestered". At the same time, one entry states, the NSA's general counsel was considering filing an appeal.

The Guardian informed the White House, the NSA and the office of the director of national intelligence that it planned to publish the documents and asked whether the spy agency routinely covered all the costs of the Prism providers and what the annual cost was to the US.

The NSA declined to comment beyond requesting the redaction of the name of an individual staffer in one of the documents.