NSA Surveillance

Regarding pro's first rebuttal round. I thought we were debating the way the US intelligence agencies started operating after 9/11 when fear of terrorist attacks spiked. I have no problem with an agency monitoring potential terrorist threats on US soil. Just that hauling all the communications of all the people would be inefficient to achieve that. Bad consequences for civil liberties in tow. And pressure to restrict other forms of law enforcement when we have the big database in place. See another one of Schneier's blog posts about the US intelligence on the syrian chemical attack that lead to no preventive action and some further analysis including the quote: 'The NSA missed the Boston Marathon bombers, even though the suspects left a really sloppy Internet trail and the older brother was on the terrorist watch list'. And that was after 9/11 sparked reorganization. Point 2 of bsh1's first rebuttal concludes that people need not know the details of NSA surveillance because that would make it inefficient to adapting terrorists. Apart from most terrorist threats having been derailed with classical methods as in [1], we give a branch of law enforcement the power to neglect civil liberties. Point 3 of the first rebuttal starts by driving civil liberties restrictions out of the cost side of a cost-benefit analysis, which I find odd, concluding that I haven't touched the point. But when we come to the definition of terrorism and the nun accused of terrorism we find that not only 9/11 laws have created the possibility of civil liberties being restricted, but that such a situation is actually pursued by the people in positions of power. Security failings at the nuclear plant transferred to protesters by broadly using the laws targeting terrorists. And that costs society in general. As for the final note on failing to use more than one source I would go to the following comment on Plato by Alfred North Whitehead: 'European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato'. One source greater than all the other. Mister Schneier is a scientist that has started his career as a security researcher analysing IT systems and their use. The broad security analysis that he has made consists of an outgrowth to that. And there are no incentives for him to have a political opinion other than what would constitute a benefit for the entire society. Regarding pro's second rebuttal round. We find civil liberties restrictions claimed to not be costs of NSA surveillance once again. I also state once again that mister Reinares's opinion was based on classical intelligence gathering and not extreme hauling of all the information. I repeat to say I thought we were debating post 9/11 mass surveillance only. Where leads for combating crimes come from individually warranted surveillance started by reports from affected citizens. There is nothing wrong with centralising local police records created from classical information gathering where surveillance of potential criminals of terrorists comes with supervision of the judicial system. I also do not know of any mass surveillance done in Italy that would parallel what it has recently transpired in the media that NSA has been doing on US citizens for some time after 9/11. Mister Carafano and mister Alexander are one most interested and a one very interested person in the outcome of the media debate about mass surveillance. I have learned from Wikipedia that mister Carafano has been a high ranking member of the US Army[3]. Therefore he has risen to The Heritage Foundation director position from being an insider of the government. I find his publicly expressed positions on contentious matters between the government and the public not objective. Also in [4] he has not made a great stand for surveillance when confronted with the NSA lies in Congress. [4] is also found a source for why general warrants were unwanted by th US Founding Fathers drafting the constitution. In the same [4] source we find two congressmen to be clashing on weather the 50 foiled terrorist plots were real or not. So much for bsh1's sources. Regarding the second contention. I was not attacking the numbers from NSA's own analysis. It was just not painting a fair picture of the amount of surveillance and the amount of data that being stored. This is in my mind similar to a non denial denial. Put out low sounding figures to create the impression that surveillance is small to someone not paying attention. I have just contended that resources are thrown at an inefficient mass information gathering activity. It will also put pressure on the othe terrorist investigation activities because of the perception that there is money well spent to do intelligence gathering. So what are the fixed dots to start a reasonable connect the dots activity? The british troops doing searches by using general warrants in [4] were mandated by law to do so. Therefore no need to claim that what is happening with the NSA mass surveillance is any different because of changed landscape between now and then. Redcoats stealing and doing other bad stuff is just as wrong as spying on spouses or even worse things that have not transpired. Repeat after me: Sir David Osmond being politically involved in the matter is a closed case or vote against me. Regarding FISA dealing with special secret info and having good oversight. The situation in [4] applies here as well. Nothing unlawful about the way redcoats were executing most search warrant mandated activities. And the NSA has long had a problem overclassifying information[5]. Therefore many issues levied as being problems of national security may be problems of national emberasement in fact. No facing the facts when you define things as secret. There is nothing wrong in general with consevatives. The liberals may be as bad. What I was saying is that The Heritage Foundation is not independent. I used huffingtonpost.com to show that it is very politically involved in a matter that is quite different. I also used the liberal Slate magazine to show how NSA's public communication is misinforming. I my mind NSA using special definitions of common words to twist the thruth is fact and not opinion. Facts are not dependent on the political bias of the publication. Look at Schneier for same tactics by private companies[6]: 'Google and Facebook insist that the NSA has no "direct access" to their servers. Of course not; the smart way for the NSA to get all the data is through sniffers. Apple says it's never heard of PRISM. Of course not; that's the internal name of the NSA database.' The NSA is just using misinformation on a grander scale. [1] https://www.schneier.com... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org... [4] 4:46 to 7:10 [5] https://www.schneier.com...