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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

#221

Post by Grimm1 »

slg wrote: post #217
Grimm1 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your life is worse because the government is openly antagonist towards the populace it was created to serve. Even if it doesn't effect you now all you need to do is look at historical examples from other nations going down the same path. There's a reason the poem "First they came ..." exists and it's a direct counter point to the argument you're making. Otherwise I don't know what you want here, historically the mass…

>Your life is worse because the government is openly antagonist towards the populace it was created to serve. What does this mean in relation to the debate about NSA spying? How is the NSA antagonizing me? What is one example of a material impact on my life? >Even if it doesn't effect you now all you need to do is look at historical examples from other nations going down the same path. There's a reason the poem "Firs…

Something being bad doesn't have to have a material impact on you to be bad you should be against it simply because in principal it's a bad thing. Government over reach is a slippery slope and is bad therefor spying via overreach is bad. I'm not your personal savior I don't really care what you believe and I wasn't here to convince anyone of anything let alone you, I stated my personal beliefs.

Edit: I'll also leave off with where if your beliefs don't include government spying being bad you and I likely are coming from very ideologically different starting points and I have no intention of trying to spend my time walking you from A to B I'll leave that for the evangelists I have other things to fill my time.

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

#222

Post by GuB-42 »

bigbubba wrote: post #93
GuB-42 wrote: post #78

> NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack Because terrorist attacks that were prevented didn't happen, there is no way to know. We could only speculate by correlating terrorist attacks and surveillance, but there are so many external variables that it is effectively impossible to prove causation. What the ruling said is that the NSA surveillance program resulted in only one conviction relat…

> Because terrorist attacks that were prevented didn't happen, there is no way to know. We could only speculate by correlating terrorist attacks and surveillance, but there are so many external variables that it is effectively impossible to prove causation. This is nonsense, foiled attacks make the news. The FBI foiled a terrorist attack against the governor of Michigan a few days ago and that certainly made the news…

There is a difference between a foiled attack and one that is prevented.

For example if you lock your bike and when you come back, you see bolt cutter marks on your lock and your bike it still there, you know that it stopped the thief.

But for one attempt like that, there are probably a hundred more potential thieves that just passed by, saw your lock and didn't do anything.

Seeing your lock untouched doesn't mean it is useless. It may or may not have prevented your bike from being stolen, but there is no way to be sure.

In the same way, a terrorist may have had plans, but because of surveillance, he knew he would never have succeeded, and gave up. Seriously I doubt it, but that's a possibility.

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

#223

Post by slg »

Grimm1 wrote: post #221
slg wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Your life is worse because the government is openly antagonist towards the populace it was created to serve. What does this mean in relation to the debate about NSA spying? How is the NSA antagonizing me? What is one example of a material impact on my life? >Even if it doesn't effect you now all you need to do is look at historical examples from other nations going down the same path. There's a reason the poem "Firs…

Something being bad doesn't have to have a material impact on you to be bad you should be against it simply because in principal it's a bad thing. Government over reach is a slippery slope and is bad therefor spying via overreach is bad. I'm not your personal savior I don't really care what you believe and I wasn't here to convince anyone of anything let alone you, I stated my personal beliefs. Edit: I'll also leave…

You can reread my comments and you will see I am not against you on this. I started my first comment with "If we...". I am including myself in with the people who are failing.

I believe we need to get better at explaining this issue. We need people who are "trying to spend [their] time walking you from A to B" because flatly saying "you should be against it simply because in principal it's a bad thing" is not going to motivate any political change.

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

#224

Post by lawnchair_larry »

zepto wrote: post #194
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that parent is wrong (and horribly wrong, to the point of downright fabrication beyond anything Snowden has ever said), but actually you are also wrong. Under PRISM, data cannot be taken without participation. The simple reason for that is that “participation in PRISM” more or less means you respond to court orders. You are confusing it with other programs. The one you are referring to was reported as…

I’m not wrong. We know they respond to fisa warrants. Nobody claims otherwise. But - also know from Snowden we know that that PRISM is not just an aggregation of responses to fisa warrants. PRISM also involved intercepting Google’s bulk traffic from their fiber without Google’s knowledge, and various other kind of interception. If you equate PRISM with aggregating fisa warrants responses, then what you say is true. H…

No, that’s not correct. As I said, that was MUSCULAR, not PRISM.

The interception against US companies like Google was not done in the US, and there is a good reason for that. You are mixing up different programs.

Feel free to dig up the original reporting. They were distinct programs. PRISM requests are serviced by the provider and go through the FBI.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_progr...

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

#225

Post by Grimm1 »

slg wrote: post #223
Grimm1 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being bad doesn't have to have a material impact on you to be bad you should be against it simply because in principal it's a bad thing. Government over reach is a slippery slope and is bad therefor spying via overreach is bad. I'm not your personal savior I don't really care what you believe and I wasn't here to convince anyone of anything let alone you, I stated my personal beliefs. Edit: I'll also leave…

You can reread my comments and you will see I am not against you on this. I started my first comment with "If we...". I am including myself in with the people who are failing. I believe we need to get better at explaining this issue. We need people who are "trying to spend [their] time walking you from A to B" because flatly saying "you should be against it simply because in principal it's a bad thing" is not going t…

To be honest the entire thread sat weirdly with me, not sure why.

That said I just disagree with you that the masses typically are motivated about anything not just government spying I think action and change will come from a small group of people with vested interest, at least initially.

Everyone has that personal issue but it turns out that everyone's "I want this to change" issue is typically pretty different from one another so finding that similar group and banding together there to fix the problem I expect to be better than finding some key to ignite the masses.

And FWIW if the argument from the government is "See these people don't care about it so it can't be bad" is in itself a super weak argument. People and the government haven't cared about plenty of things that, at least in my set of morals, turned out to be super bad even if only a small set of people initially protested so.

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

#226

Post by lern_too_spel »

This is a pretty garbage article. It confuses PRISM, which is a data integration project to ingest data from the FBI into the NSA's databases, with Stellar Wind, which is the phone metadata collection program that this article is about.

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

#227

Post by zepto »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #224
zepto wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not wrong. We know they respond to fisa warrants. Nobody claims otherwise. But - also know from Snowden we know that that PRISM is not just an aggregation of responses to fisa warrants. PRISM also involved intercepting Google’s bulk traffic from their fiber without Google’s knowledge, and various other kind of interception. If you equate PRISM with aggregating fisa warrants responses, then what you say is true. H…

No, that’s not correct. As I said, that was MUSCULAR, not PRISM. The interception against US companies like Google was not done in the US, and there is a good reason for that. You are mixing up different programs. Feel free to dig up the original reporting. They were distinct programs. PRISM requests are serviced by the provider and go through the FBI. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_progr...

I stand corrected.

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

#228

Post by dumpsterdiver »

bumby wrote: post #117
antris wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point Carlin was trying to make is that the human experience is removed from a term such as "post-traumatic stress disorder". Yes, it might be more medically accurate, but fighting for the rights of people who experienced "shell shock" might have been more impactful. When your experienced is buried underneath medical terms, you bury the humanity of it.

A plausible counterpoint is that renaming can also remove a lot of the social stigma, leading to more people getting treatment. As an example, I believe many prefer using the term "post-traumatic stress/PTS" now because it removes the "disorder" stigma. I.e., it better communicates that it's a natural reaction to such stress and nothing to be ashamed of [1] https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/ptsd/relate…

That's a good point, and your PTS sans-D reference exemplified it well IMO. I think at this point it would be justified to label every one of us with PTSD, after suriving the pandemic so far, and I for one would prefer just post-trauamtic stress, instead of tagging myself with a "disorder" as if I had done something wrong.

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

#229

Post by [deleted] »

Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #210
artificialLimbs wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am interested in knowing your examples.

Does this [1] from 2015 meet your criteria? [1] It’s Time to Put an End to the NSA’s Bulk Collection of Americans’ Metadata https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/04/its-time-put-end-nsas...

[deleted]

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

#230

Post by dumpsterdiver »

Nasrudith wrote: post #208
tingol wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well "fatigue", "exhaustion" and "shock" imply you could just get over those, as medicine advanced we got a better picture of what it is, hence the more precise term now. As for the "Patriot Act", it's funny how ironic of a name it is.

There was a predecessor name to Shellshock of "Soldier's Heart" back in the American Civil war. In such a brother against brother civil war it wouldn't have been judged shameful but with later militarism could have implied "weakness" against the propaganda dehumanized foreign menance. Assuring memory held to WWI and it wasn't an independent rediscovery/reinvention "shell shock" dodged the character image driven denia…

> And well authoritarians have no sense of irony - what they think is "ironic" is presenting their true self when it unacceptable and passing it off as a joke.

(squints) I think you've actually uncovered a true case of irony here. How would you know that the dictator considers their propoganda ironic? The fact that people read it and still laugh it off is the true irony.

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