Is the site behind paywall? I don't want to register just to read one article.
Last time I checked it's a staged paywall. You get X articles for free without any action, X+Y articles if you register, there may be another "free" stage, and of course you can start paying and that may have more than one level. They compete with The Wall Street Journal , which is famously about the only paper that made a success of on-line subscriptions a long time ago.
Any other sources on this story? The fact that the US spends $80 billion (overall?) on signals intelligence would not be particularly surprising.