

No, Mass Surveillance Won't Stop Terrorist Attacks - api
http://reason.com/archives/2015/01/27/mass-surveillance-and-terrorism

======
api
Among many other factors I get the feeling there's a huge pork dimension
behind all this mass surveillance stuff -- it's big money for government IT
contractors, data mining companies, etc.

Any thoughts on what the other motivating factors are?

The common refrain we here is that governments want all this surveillance to
stifle dissent, but there's a minor issue with that idea: if it doesn't work
to stop terrorism, why would it work to stop dissent? I mean I suppose in a
totalitarian state you can stifle dissent by identifying dissenters and
beating them up or killing them, in a liberal Western democracy dissent isn't
a crime. So even if they know you're a dissenter, what does that accomplish? I
suppose they can soft harass -- no-fly lists and IRS audits and the like --
but that's just as likely to breed _more_ dissent. The "mountains of big dumb
data" problem also shows up here -- trying to bulk-identify dissenters is
going to generate massive lists that are full of false positives. Your dragnet
might even catch a fair number of the opposite -- extreme jingoist patriots --
as they'd also appear outside the norm politically.

What are these programs really for?

