the benefits of domestic surveillance conducted by the nsa outweigh the harms

I would like to start off my second round by referring to my opponents contentions. In my opponents first contention, they stated that " Where the citizens of the United States live in a world where they are always threatened by terrorism, whether they know it or not, they must be able to rely on the government and government programs as an source for security. " This is an unreasonable claim, because the government is not protecting Americans. An example of this is the Boston bombing on April 15, 2013. The NSA, and other parts of the government knew the Tsarnaev brothers had been in touch, and working with terrorist groups, however they did not stop the attack from happening. America should not put billions, if not trillions of dollars into a program that does not work. Now i will focus on my opponents second contention they contention. I would like to point out that my opponent contradicts him/her self. They first stated "it may not be blatantly clear how much terrorism these programs have stopped,". they then went on claiming something drastically wrong in the same contention saying "Heritage research has noted 54 foiled terrorist plots since 9/11" This is false information that the Chief of the NSA Alexander lied about. I will now refer back to my contention 2 to prove i am right, and that 54 attacks have NOT BEEN FOILED BY THE NSA. In my second contention i said"NSA Director Keith Alexander gave out the erroneous number while the Obama administration was defending its domestic spying operations exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. He said surveillance data collected that led to 53 of those 54 plots had provided the initial tips to "unravel the threat stream. " But Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday during a hearing on the continued oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the administration was pushing incomplete or inaccurate statements about the bulk collection of phone records from communications providers. "For example, we"ve heard over and over again that 54 terrorist plots have been thwarted by the use of (this program)," Leahy said. "That"s plainly wrong," adding: "These weren"t all plots and they weren"t all thwarted. "Alexander admitted that only 13 of the 54 cases were connected to the United States. He also told the committee that only one or two suspected plots were identified as a result of bulk phone record collection. . http://thestateweekly.com...... by Noel Brinkerh. " This proves that many of the points my opponent made were invalid, and his/her second contention proves nothing. I will now move on and focus on my opponents third contention. They bring up the fact that ""In domestic and foreign affairs, the basic function of government is to protect our liberty, without unnecessarily violating that liberty in the process. " This proves nothing because the resolution clearly states "the benefits of domestic surveillance conducted by the nsa outweigh the harms", not domestic and foreign, so this argument is invalid also. However, i do agree with my opponenton their last statement.