How much is US "intelligence " spending to protect you from terrorists?

(...)

In recent years, we have become accustomed to reading reports of enormous government spending — billions, trillions, gazillions. These numbers mean practically nothing to ordinary people. Out here in peasant-land, we have trouble enough in trying to figure out how we’ll pay a $400 bill for the electricity used in August.

So, let’s try to bring the “intelligence” spending into comprehensible focus by using a little arithmetic and asking a few questions.

(...)

Moreover, the so-called intelligence gathering that the government bankrolls so lavishly is aimed in great part, not at Muslim madmen, but at you and me. The government’s banks of super-computers and legions of apparatchiki are busily gleaning data on your telephone calls, Internet messages and Web searches, financial and other business transactions, and virtually everything else that touches your life in a way that can be snatched into data banks by soulless bureaucrats and techno-flunkies. Yet, while every nook and cranny of your privacy is being invaded, at your expense, you are being assured that these official crimes are all legitimate means of protecting you from grave, impending harm. Should we also believe in fairy tales and ghost stories? Full story...

Don't miss: 

1. Yemen? Yeah, man! That's where the terrorists are...
2. The fear of terror and the terror of fear...
3. How the CIA runs a secret army of 3,000 assassins...
4. Learning the truth about terrorism...
5. Al Qaeda is a myth, never existed, says BBC...