I don't work with the government, I'm private sector / academic research based.

Thanks for the little bit of info, I did find some other kinetic defence budget requests under CJ on congress.gov which discusses classified matters at a very high level, so I can't imagine why intelligence would be any different.

The request to renew the NSA budget I'm assured is most definitely before Congress at the moment, it surprises me that budgetary and appropriations matters would be totally classified. I'm not a fan of governments making significant decisions behind closed doors, we went through a bout of it with our previous government and it wasn't our best moment.

Surely there is some material available? I would be gravely concerned about any firm of significance that cannot provide a budget or forecast to stakeholders. I was told "they are applying to have their budget renewed in full for at least another 3-5 years, including all the FISA warrant stuff".

In Australia all our budget spending at least at a high level is publicly available, and rightfully so. Australian's have this "we want to know how they're spending our money" ethos, and there would be outrage if these things were done in secrecy.

We also have a Senate Appropriations Committee which 100% transparent, you can look through all their deliberations on aph.gov.au in significant detail and watch the prtoceedings live on TV un-edited. The meetings/hearings are usually led by the opposition, so it's a disincentive for many things and is an important control in our system of democracy. It is however post-hoc.

That, compulsory voting and the operation of elections is a completely separate function of government that does not sit under any of the ministerial portfolios. I think America would benefit from something similar.

Is there anywhere else you can possibly think of that I can look? Where is this video archive?

Thanks for your advice WRT talking to the Australian Government, but Canberra (our version of Capitol Hill) is very difficult to navigate WRT cyber security, and our relationship with America on the topic is very much an asymmetric one, so I don't think they would have the information anyway.

Our SIGINT, CYBERINT, CYBER-DEFENCE and cyber-crisis management functions are all in the same department which sits under the defence force, which makes interfacing with the government very difficult.

I have given up trying to get anywhere with them on anything, as they are just not useful. They don't know whether to spy on someone or assist them, and I have had the weirdest of exchanges with them. I'm also very outspoken about calling people to task when I think things can be done better, so I'm not popular there at all.

Consensus in industry is that one tends to avoid them where they can till they sort themselves out, or they join the dark side and get paid by them.

I'm a net creator of IP and our federal clearances imply a transfer or exclusion of intellectual property use, so I won't ever sign one. I only get banking level clearances, which makes things fun.

I am very curious to see at least at a top level how the NSA is splitting up it's budget for several reasons:

CISA being split out from NSA I think was a good move by America, it would be nice if they gave the same advice to Australia, and I want to see if it's considered a success. If cyber-defence spending within NSA has transferred to CISA then that will say something.

There's supposed to be a big cyber-defence system NSA built, which my understanding is it should have come live around 2017, but nothing has been said of it since ~2015.

I'm very curious to know if there is anything cyber defence related in NSA's budget or if the entire function has been transferred to CISA and/or if their cyber defence project has been shutdown.

I'm working on a textbook about cyber security at the moment, but I've been asked to join in a couple nation scale cyber defence projects that are in the pipeline which I may consider working on next so this is very much my space.

Personally I think building an AI that helps people recover from cyber-trauma as PhD topic might be the best use of my time once this textbook is written, but that's still in the cyber defence bucket. I'm very curious to see where America is with defensive cyber strategies and spending, as the text I'm writing at the moment shows there is a philosophical and theoretical gap in the state of the art.

NSA is also the source of a number of problems (as with any organisation), I'd like to see if anyone has questioned them on their conduct which might go some way to correcting it, or if it's being allowed to continue.

Finally, there is the question of whether NSA has multiple revenue sources, which would go some way to answering a couple cyber-mysteries, such as whom is selling "commercial encryption boxes" to nation states.

Thus Australia and I are both significant stakeholder in these deliberations, both as an allied nation and as a member of the global village. We and I have a right to know what's going on, and so does the American people. The Tech industry as a whole also has a vested interest, which I am connected to.

If you could assist further that would be most appreciated.

Cheers!

.\p