The cost is $20 million per year. We know exactly what PRISM is and exactly how much it costs. The slides tell us: https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/pr.... The engineers who worked on the integration with the FBI have also told many of us who work in the Valley, and The New York Times had competent enough editorial staff to get the story right while The Guardian continued to spew nonsense: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-compani....

In particular, we know that PRISM isn't "bulk data collection" as this article wrongly states.