
U.S. Mass Surveillance Has No Record of Thwarting Large Terror Attacks - garrettr_
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-has-no-record-of-thwarting-large-terror-attacks-regardless-of-snowden-leaks/
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forgotpwtomain
I think it's very clear to everyone not tuning into to the mass-media
narrative that the true goal of all the governments and agencies involved is
not "preventing the next terror threat" but a power-play for the control of
information.

Not only is there no pertinent evidence to demonstrate that surveillance has
ever paid off; There is much more so, _extremely pertinent_ evidence that
demonstrates the past 30 years of foreign policy have directly contributed to
past and current day terrorist threats: Financing the Taliban and Bin-laden to
fight the soviets in the 80's, invading and destabilizing Iraq, financing
Syrian rebels (in part ISIS supporters and/or sympthathizers) while
destabilizing Syria, etc, etc..- Yet somehow none of this is part of the main-
stream narrative and a couple months later Obama will be asking congress for
more funds to fight Assad and the NSA will be asking for broader surveillance
powers.

I'm very sorry for the people that have lost their family members and loved
ones in the course of these things but the answer is not and cannot be "more
drone strikes" and "everyone forfeit your privacy".

~~~
jacobolus
30 years is a pretty short time horizon to look at. Western meddling as a
driver of chaos and authoritarianism in the Middle East stretches back at
least a century or two.

If Europeans hadn’t drawn completely arbitrary national borders all over the
region after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, if Palestine had been left to its
Arab inhabitants instead of displacing them in favor of European Jews, if the
British and Americans hadn’t put so much emphasis on securing the Suez Canal
via support for friendly dictatorships nearby, if the US hadn’t toppled the
Iranian democracy under Mosaddegh in 1953 to reinstall the Shah, if Western
European, Russian, and American guns hadn’t been handed out on all sides like
candy, etc., the region would certainly be far different from now.

But it’s impossible to guess exactly what the effects of some counterfactual
foreign policy over the past century would be.

~~~
mc32
Arbitrary borders doesn't explain it all. Africa has just as many arbitrary
borders and lots of wars and insurrection happened and continue to happen, but
except for north Africa, sub-Saharan Africa doesn't suffer the same kind of
chaos and terrorism except for where isil AQ, etc have operatives. So, Africa
seems to indicate that terrorism requires a foreign religious aspect in order
to take root.

~~~
exelius
Arbitrary borders + tribal politics describes pretty much all of it. I mean,
we talk about Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq like they are countries, but they're
really more like negative space.

Africa absolutely suffers the same kind of chaos and terrorism -- we just
don't hear about it because it's less densely populated and the people there
have darker skin. But Boko Haram is still a huge problem in Nigeria and
Islamic fundamentalism in Somalia is a way bigger problem than you would think
given the total lack of news coverage (the US launches almost as many drone
strikes on eastern Africa as it does in the middle east).

Much of sub-saharan Africa is still under de-facto apartheid. Wealthy (often
white) land owners are in bed with corrupt government officials who, while
black, are more than happy to continue the status quo as long as they get
paid. It's very hard to have a cohesive ideology behind your insurgency when
there are for-profit death squads operating in the area. But you're right;
there is also no great unifying force for the people in the area like there is
in the middle east and north Africa.

~~~
mc32
Bokoharam and alshahab are extensions of the problems in north Africa, they
are not indigenous to subsaharan Africa. You don't see the dame problems in
Mozambique or Angola or Botswana. These places have had their problems but
they don't export them and don't fancy taking the rest of the world down with
them.

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suprgeek
That is because "Preventing terrorist attacks" is used only to SELL the
program to the populace. Its real goal is to make it so that the status-quo is
not disturbed.

These programs will be used and are being used to monitor and arrest domestic
radicals, support foreign espionage for American economic interests, etc much
more than any terrorist prevention:

In order of priority:

1) Target "Occupy wallstreet", G20 protests, Greenpeace etc

2) Target foreign govts & corporations for economic gain

3) Target Radicals in foreign countries that oppose US interests (some of
these could very well be terrorists also)

4) Actual terrorists

So if we keep using the wrong metric to measure success then obviously "Mass
surveillance" has failed.

The Director of the CIA wasted no time blaming Snowden for the Paris attacks
[1] - dismissing all concerns as "hand-wringing". I am now waiting for the
"Our current spying is not enough, we need even more spying powers" congress
actions to surface. Cynically exploiting the fear and concern after an attack
is the real game here - the "efficacy" of the measures proposed is irrelevant,
as no one will be able to hold them accountable.

[1] - [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/us/after-paris-attacks-
cia...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/us/after-paris-attacks-cia-director-
rekindles-debate-over-surveillance.html)

~~~
heroh
In Wake of Paris, FCC Seeks Power to Monitor, Shutter Websites

"Citing possible links between terror-related websites and online
communications and Friday’s attacks on Paris, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler
suggested Tuesday Congress give the agency more authority to use ‘big data’ to
monitor and act on potential threats."

[http://www.insidesources.com/in-wake-of-paris-fcc-seeks-
powe...](http://www.insidesources.com/in-wake-of-paris-fcc-seeks-power-to-
monitor-shutter-websites/)

This will be pushed into the narrative & they will have their way.

------
ori_b
I don't like surveillance, but at the same time, I wonder: How much of this
lack of record can be attributed to parallel construction, where law
enforcement uses the surveillance results to "luckily" know where to look, and
"by chance" figure out how to foil the terrorists?

I can imagine that the intelligence agencies may not be thrilled about
broadcasting their capabilities.

My nightmare scenario is that surveillance actually is helping, but the extent
is a closely guarded secret, which means that we'll never get rid of it, and
we'll never know why, or have a chance to, as a society, have a conversation
about the tradeoff between surveillance and counterterrorism.

------
fredgrott
What the article left out..

Guess what the limiting factor of effective surveillance of Islamic terrorists
is?

And I state that the CIA and NSA have known this since the early 1970s...

Ready? Its the amount of trained foreign language people that the CIA, NSA,
and FBI have that happen to be skilled in largely Arabic based languages.

Now for the wrinkle how do we get those numbers increased?

Guess? The exact opposite of what republican law makers want to do that is
have a fully functioning immigration system.

NSA could tomorrow sweep all communication world-wide but without concrete
steps to increase foreign language people to translate any of it is such a
HUGE BONDOGGLE that defies description..

~~~
dmix
That is part of a far bigger problem than just requiring a large bilingual
workforce:

[http://as2914.net/](http://as2914.net/) (map of BGP networks)

^ comparing this to finding needles in haystacks is a a severe understatement.

The scale of internet is mind-boggling. The amount of data flowing through it
is massive. Considering most of that which is relevant is wrapped in HTTPS and
even the best financed SIGINT agency will have a tough time doing mass
surveillance dragnet with any cost-effective results.

Add foreign languages into the mix and it's even more expensive.

------
unabridged
Not to defend mass surveillance, but why would there be any public record of
this? Wouldn't you expect most major thwarted attacks to be kept classified?

~~~
chiph
If they had, they would be very tempted to publicize it as that would get them
a bigger budget next year.

~~~
strictnein
Revealing what they stopped would also possibly reveal the methods used to
stop it. And they're not exactly hurting in the budget department.

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hatsunearu
Can anything twart "Large Terror Attacks"? Is there really a socioeconomical
measure that can twart a determined attacker?

~~~
bigdubs
A phrase, "Show me a 10ft tall fence and I'll show you an 11ft tall ladder."
comes to mind.

There will always be a cat and mouse game, it seems the trick is to not play
the game in the first place.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
No, the trick is to play the game, not perfectly, but well enough that the
other side decides not to play. If you don't play and they do...

~~~
bigdubs
Why give them a reason to play? "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
makes us all blind and toothless." also then comes to mind.

~~~
vectorjohn
I don't know the right answer as to how to defend against terrorism, etc. But
this argument makes no sense. "They" (whoever they are) don't need a reason to
play, they already have one. Choosing "not to play" is just allowing whoever
they are to do whatever they want.

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hackuser
(I'm going to repeat a comment that got buried in another discussion:)

The government and businesses have built a state of surveillance far beyond
anything dreamt of a couple of decades ago, with massive continuing
investment.

Yet the tool of surveillance was unable to stop this attack. Now they want
more surveillance, but maybe it's the wrong tool for this job.

Surveillance seems to have reached that place on the technology adoption curve
where people get a little over-enthusiastic and blindly think it solves every
problem, and they haven't yet realized it's a tool which, like all tools, is
good for for things but not for others.

(That ignores the massive cost to individuals and to our societies of
surveillance.)

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msbarnett
And, reminder, France authorized a sweeping mass surveillance bill back in
May. It, too, doesn't seem to have stopped anything.

~~~
strictnein
If a government passes something, it doesn't just magically become fully
operational, regardless of what type of program it is. It takes a little more
than a couple months.

~~~
heroh
you know what's a coincidence though:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-17/hours-
befo...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-17/hours-before-the-
terror-attacks-paris-practiced-for-a-mass-shooting)

drills as mass attacks are happening - be it 9/11 , Sandy Hook, London Bombing
or others

\+ factor in: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/17/serbian-
police-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/17/serbian-police-
arrest-man-with-syrian-passport-matching-paris-attackers)

The passport of a "suicide bomber" escaped the bomb blast and landed into the
hands of autorities (conviniently) -- but now Serbian police have proven it to
be a fraudulent passport...so how did it get there?

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rhino369
What large terror attacks have hit the USA since mass surveillance began?

~~~
stavrianos
Compare to: what large tigers have attacked me since mass surveillance began?

~~~
strictnein
There's a mass surveillance program intended to stop tigers from attacking
you?

~~~
stavrianos
Systems designed to prevent black swan events need to be evaluated against a
higher standard than "there haven't been any since we started". That's not
success, it's exactly what we would have expected anyways.

~~~
strictnein
We would have expected no large scale terrorist attacks in the US from 2001
until now? Absolutely no one expected that.

Is it a black swan event if it was attempted 8 years earlier (WTC 1993, 6
dead, 1000 injured)?

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arbitrage314
Like most of you, I think mass surveillance is a fairly big problem.

Even so, how do we KNOW that there haven't been any major terrorist attacks
thwarted? If I were the government, I would keep my thwarting as secret as
possible (up until the point where the public turns against me enough to start
trying to shut me down).

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oh_sigh
How can you show this?

~~~
strictnein
They can't. They seem to be claiming to have proved a negative.

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wimagguc
"the reason there haven’t been any large-scale terror attacks by ISIS in the
U.S. is not because they were averted by the intelligence community, but
because — with the possible exception of one that was foiled by local police —
none were actually planned."

So what would happen if more attacks were planned? (Brilliant habit, reading
HN right before going to bed.)

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junto
Perfect. Timing.

This is the article that should also be on the front on the NYT and Washington
Post, the Times and the Independent.

Every major newspaper should be fulfilling its fourth estate responsibilities.

