October 28, 2013 1:31PM # The NSA’s Rent Is Too Damn High By [Steve H. Hanke](https://www.cato.org/people/steve-h-hanke) --- SHARE For months, the American public has received [a steady stream](https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline) of new information detailing the massive scale and scope of the United States’ spying activities. Of course, maintaining a surveillance state powerful enough to [reach into the inboxes](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/21/mexico-condemns-us-nsa-hacking-presidents-emails) of world leaders, [friend and foe](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/nsa-surveillance-world-leaders-calls), is not cheap. Indeed, [as the *Washington Post* revealed](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/black-budget/) when it released portions of the so-called Black Budget, this year’s price tag on America’s spook infrastructure comes out to a whopping $52.6 billion. This is, of course, a tremendous sum – more than double the size of the Department of Agriculture, more than triple the size of NASA; [the list](http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130410/AGENCY01/304100010/) goes on… But, what really puts this number into perspective is its average cost to each American taxpayer, or what I would call the NSA and associated agencies’ “rent.” Yes, the NSA’s rent, charged to [every taxpayer](http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats---Individual-Statistical-Tables-by-Filing-Status) living under its web of surveillance, comes out to an exorbitant $574 per year. If this is the price the federal government is charging American taxpayers to have their own privacy invaded, then I say the NSA’s rent is too damn high. Normally, at the end of one of these blogs, I would ask a rhetorical question like: “Washington, are you listening?” But, in this case, [we know Washington is listening](https://www.cato.org/events/nsa-surveillance-what-we-know-what-do-about-it), and now we know how much we’re being charged for it. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).