“The Post’s article doesn’t detail the ‘groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities’ Clapper mentions, and there’s no elaboration in the portion of the document published by the paper. But the document shows that 21 percent of the intelligence budget — around $11 billion — is dedicated to the Consolidated Cryptologic Program that staffs 35,000 employees in the NSA and the armed forces. Last year James Bamford reported that the NSA secretly made some sort of ‘enormous breakthrough’ in cryptanalysis several years earlier. The leaked budget document is the first published Snowden leak to touch upon the question of how safe routinely encrypted traffic is from cutting-edge nation-state spying.”
