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PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

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Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#161

Post by jariel »

anm89 wrote: post #11
0goel0 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you base that on?

Bush and his crew had the Patriot act written before 9/11 and were simply waiting around for a circumstance to justify enacting it. Honestly I'm surprised this is even a controversial opinion at this point. This is exactly what Snowden exposed. That these programs were as if not more focused on internal spying than anything else.

That the legislation was in action before 9/11 has no bearing on the assertion that 'it was designed for something else'.

There were a few attempts to blow up the WTC in the 1990's and many security officials were 'sounding the alarm' on Al-Qaeda well before 9/11.

The conspiratorial views here are unsubstantiated.

Wether or not PRISM/Patriot are effective, legal or worthwhile is a huge and legit question, but they were implemented effectively for the stated objectives.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#162

Post by alangpierce »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #107
dx87 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. While we don't know the details, it's entirely possible that it didn't stop any terrorist attacks because the intel gathered allowed the USA to remove the conditions that would have allowed an attack to be planned in the first place. Ideally, that's how it would happen, just like it's better for an organizations IT department to proactively prevent networking problems than trying to mitigate issu…

These are similar kinds of non-falsifiable claims that many authoritarian or the like use. * The stock is down 25% this year with our $100M/yr CEO, but think of how bad it would have been without them * We need tough on crime policies because unreported crimes are on the rise * Tough on crime policies deterred all the decline in crimerate * The king is good because we didnt get invaded since he sat on the throne

The big difference, I think, is that dx87's post encourages the reader to make fewer assumptions and to keep an open mind ("While we don't know the details, it's entirely possible..."), while your bullet points are statements that encourage the reader to make more assumptions.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#163

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #148
devenblake wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If wearing a mask stopped the government from being able to listen in on my phone calls I'd wear it in the shower. This new normal means I don't have to put on deodorant and I can get away with shaving every other day, I love it.

At a recent happy hour, a friend-of-a-friend who is into all government conspiracy theories (including thinking Covid is a hoax) was there. It got kind of heated, and one question I asked him was "If the government is so hellbent on instituting surveillance technology everywhere, why would they also advocate for you to wear a mask, which hinders current face recognition capabilities?" Unsurprisingly, he didn't have a…

>...why would they also advocate for you to wear a mask, which hinders current face recognition capabilities?

Not a very good conspiracy theorist!

Obviously 'person' recognition tools, facial recognition included, are good enough that models work without facial data, hindering America's enemies but giving America the upper hand. This uses the assumption that miltech is anywhere from 10-100 years ahead of bleeding edge/experimental public/research tech.

I don't buy this theory but it's fun to consider.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#164

Post by anarazel »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #4

You'd think if it had stopped any attacks, the program's proponents would be shouting it from the rooftops. But no- nothing. Not even attempts to lie ("oh, we stopped several attacks, but we can't tell you anything about them...") PRISM is a phenomenal waste of trust and money.

There's been a lot of statements about the efficacy of parts of PRISM, just not about the metadata collection. Obviously not the end-all-be-all but the PCLOB reports about 215 and 702 are worth skimming.

215: https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/e...

702: https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/8...

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#165

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

remus wrote: post #143
conistonwater wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understood correctly(?), the claim is that PRISM data was used in only one case, and in that case it was later judged to be irrelevant, therefore PRISM data was never used to help secure a single conviction. But I'm not sure this is right, I found the article pretty confusing on the subject of what actually happened, so I'm not sure. Personally I agree with Imnimo's comment that this is just an overly confusing…

> PRISM data was never used to help secure a single conviction. I think it's worth noting that this is also fairly normal for signals intelligence of all types. If you want to use intelligence as evidence in a trial then you have to make that evidence available for scrutiny by the defense which is something intelligence agencies almost never want to do. As I understand it (obviously Im not very informed here!) you'd…

[]u.s police departments have dropped cases that relied on evidence collected by stingrays. Anyways, using Intel to build a case so the Intel and methods aren't exposed is called parallel construction and it should be illegal to do against citizens except in extraordinary circumstances. Certainly not when police departments get bored and use the ray to take down the boys slinging bags on the block.

[] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140620/10271327635/new-e...

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#166

Post by zepto »

fsflover wrote: post #124
zepto wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that what you are saying is false, and the links you provide don’t back up your assertion in the slightest. Perhaps some of these companies ‘joined’ prism willingly, but Google and Apple both deny having done so. The dates you quote are from slides indicating when prism started to acquire data from these companies. They have nothing to do with membership or joining . Data was obtained from these compan…

> Perhaps some of these companies ‘joined’ prism willingly, but Google and Apple both deny having done so. And you of course trust them.

No, but not trusting them doesn’t mean that I accept any old bullshit people want to say about them without supporting evidence.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#167

Post by fsflover »

zepto wrote: post #166
fsflover wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps some of these companies ‘joined’ prism willingly, but Google and Apple both deny having done so. And you of course trust them.

No, but not trusting them doesn’t mean that I accept any old bullshit people want to say about them without supporting evidence.

Practically everything that Snowden leaked turned out to be true. I would not call that bullshit.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#168

Post by bleepblorp »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #34
alehul wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, maybe naively, always believed that the U.S. operates at a level of secrecy and complexity where dozens of terrorist attacks are thwarted every year, and that this surveillance plays a hand in it (but to admit that would hinder its effectiveness). Is it really possible we only have Maybe it is possible, in which case the U.S. has been very successful at convincing my generation it's a larger issue than it rea…

If you subscribe to a definition of "terrorist attack" that includes "someone with political beliefs I don't like possessing a handgun in violation of the law" then sure, dozens per year thwarted sounds about right.

'Politically-motivated violence waged against civilians in violation of the law' (excluding situations of organized war) is the most likely the least controversial definition of terrorism.

I'm curious why you appear to imply this definition of terrorism is unsuitable.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#169

Post by ticviking »

jogjayr wrote: post #79
MarcellusDrum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Patriot Act" is so maliciously named its more funny than sad. Reminds me of George Carlin's show about changing words to make them softer.[1] An good example he used to show this is the condition the fighters get from shock in combat. In WW1, it was called Shell Shock, a terrifying name. The same condition in WW1 was called Battle Fatigue, a nicer name. In the Korean War, the name changed to Operational Exhausti…

The intent isn't to make it softer though. "PTSD" is more accurate than "shell shock". In WWI they thought that the accumulated shockwave exposure from constant shelling caused mental issues in soldiers. Today we know that all sorts of stressful situations can cause PTSD; it doesn't require being in the trenches taking howitzer fire day and night.

Actually we're getting increasing evidence that there are two different disorders/diseases here.

1. is the low grade TBI(traumatic brain injury) that is fairly called "Shell shock" 2. is the psychological weight of traumatic experiences

The evidence is pretty strong that part of why soldiers PTSD is so hard to treat(not that PTSD is easy to treat in general) is that their neurons have been damaged so it's literally more difficult for them to learn new stress responses and make use of CBT(Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to manage their inappropriate, for civilian life, stress responses.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#170

Post by zepto »

ksk wrote: post #158
zepto wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that what you are saying is false, and the links you provide don’t back up your assertion in the slightest. Perhaps some of these companies ‘joined’ prism willingly, but Google and Apple both deny having done so. The dates you quote are from slides indicating when prism started to acquire data from these companies. They have nothing to do with membership or joining . Data was obtained from these compan…

I think you're correct in general (in terms of standards of evidence), but if we are to accept Google's claims at face value, then why would you not also accept the leaked emails as evidence of collaboration? Specifically, this[1] email exchange: NSA Director (Keith Alexander) to Google's CEO :- "It was good seeing you recently after the meeting earlier this month" "Google’s participation in refinement, engineering a…

They are evidence of some kind of collaboration.

The problem is that evidence of collaboration doesn’t substantiate anything at all about participation in prism or any other illegal or underhanded scheme.

We know that Google does have portals to service lawful government information requests.

It’s also entirely possible that Google participated in some kind of analytics development based on their web indexing and nothing to do with private user data.

Either of these would be at least plausible explanations for these comments as “they joined prism and handed over all data to the NSA”.

Innuendo is not evidence.

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