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Great, so the government would have laws that prevent us from ever knowing what they think is an acceptable level of surveillance of our daily lives. That has no potential for misuse.

I get that the leaks could potentially give an advantage to terrorists, but if they're so smart they're following the leaks with baited breath and reworking their tactics, the likelihood is they're probably already avoid using channels that they believe are compromised. If they're using channels that are compromised they're probably too ineffective to pull off a large scale terror attack.



Well, as for the bad guys, most of the public perception of them seems to be based on Holywood movies. In real life their sophistication seems to be absolute BS -- crude stuff that only works (sporadically at that) because a) it's simple to the point that nobody can prevent such stuff anyway, b) the agencies let it happen, c) the agencies are incompetent.

I don't believe they blocked any large scale stuff we don't know about. If they did, they would be shouting it on the rooftops, to show how effective and necessary they are.


That's the argument isn't it, 'we need this to protect you, but we can't tell because it's super classified'.




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