Resolved: The benefits of domestic surveillance by the NSA outweigh the harms

Let's begin by noting that Pro's argument contains no original content. Since Pro failed to provide credit to the authors of his argument, I will do so.The resolution is, of course, the National Forensic League's Public Forum topic for November. The entire body of contentions #1 and #2 are a cut & paste from Max Boot's June 9th Op-Ed in the LA Times:http://articles.latimes.com...Not a surprising argument from Boot, who is after all a Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations. Boot is a prominent Neoconservative voice who has never not liked an American Invasion. He argued for a full scale air and sea attack on Libya in 2011 and is furious that we have not yet invaded Syria. The naked application of force is Boot's sole contribution to American policy and he does little fretting about the human consequences.But it's not Boot's fault that his information is out-of-date. Pro should have plagiarized a more recent editorial. We can fault Boot for sourcing the Heritage Foundation (who can't quote the price of a gallon of milk without applying a conservative slant) estimate that 50 domestic terrorist attacks had been foiled since 2001, but that was in line with NSA Director Keith Alexander's estimate of 54 attacks provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in June of this year. By October, after considerable grilling by Chairman Patrick Leahy, Alexander was forced to reduce that estimate to "less than 13," then admit that those were not "all terrorists plots and they weren't all foiled" and finally admit that the actual plots foiled by NSA spying was only "one or perhaps two." http://www.washingtontimes.com...Two weeks later, Alexander and his top deputy had to resign in the aftermath of these revelations. When Boot stated in June that there was no evidence of NSA abuse of the database, he probably should have been aware of Obama Administration admissions of abuse in 2008 and 2010, but he can't be blamed for not knowing about the NSA Inspector General's letter to Senator Chuck Grassley in July detailing 12 recent cases of NSA abuse (One man used the database to monitor six former girlfriends on the the first day he was granted clearance), or the admission that 4,000 additional potential compromises of sensitive data were under investigation since the Snowden revelations.http://www.washingtonpost.com...Pro's third contention is a cut & paste from a Pew Research Poll dated June 10, just a few days after Greenwald's major articles and long before the scale and scope of NSA monitoring was understood by most people. Again, Pro should have pulled up more recent information since the pendulum of public opinion swung away from the NSA in the five months since Pro's Pew Poll. Here's Pew data just six weeks later: By September, an AP poll found that 60% of American oppose NSA data collectionhttp://www.foxnews.com...While a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 74% of American consider NSA surveillance an intrusion on their rights: I guess we'll wait to see if Pro has any recent data or original arguments to offer in the second round before I delve into my full argument, but I can lay down an outline now.THESIS: The harm of NSA domestic surveillance outweighs the benefits. NSA spying is an ineffective tactic for anticipating terrorist attacks, reinforces long term terrorist strategies, and represents a significant violation of freedoms for Americans.Tactically ineffective because the NSA now admits that domestic spying has only thwarted "one or maybe two" attacks while missing a fair number including this Spring's Boston Marathon Bombing, while costing a huge amount of money and creating a database ripe for abuse. Since terrorists have long since learned better than use observable electronic communication for planning, the chances that this tactic will uncover plots in the future is seriously diminished.Strategically inept because NSA spying plays right into Al-Qaeda's long term goals costing much with little gain, alienating our allies, reinforcing our enemies' fears, and corrupting American values.Unconstitutional because the NSA is empowered by the war powers act, requiring the extension of potential enemy combatant status to every American citizen, because FISA oversight is a rubber stamp, because American First and Fourth Amendment rights are violated.Consider further that NSA data is shared data with foreign governments, especially the UK. Can anybody really suppose that the authors of the Constitution intended our government to share data with Britain that they would not dare share with its own citizens?There is no military victory in our War on Terror. There will always be terrorists adapting to our security measures and finding ways to threaten U.S. security. Think of 211B.C., when Hannibal camped 3 miles outside the gates of Rome. Every massive army Rome sent against him was defeated. Hannibal's army had spent 7 years razing the Roman countryside, trying to provoke an irrational response. But when the farm that Hannibal's army camped on came up for auction in the marketplace, the acreage sold for a normal price. Only by restraint and persistence did Rome defeat Hannibal. Likewise, the U.S. must demonstrate restraint against Terror. We cannot win by tracking down every bomb, we only win by refusing to let those bombs change us.