Phone Spying Prevented ’50 Attacks’ Including NYC Plots

[La Dolce Vita]

I agree with Solitary. I honestly don't blame the terrorists. I sympathize with them. The United States is by far one of the most evil countries in the entire world.

Yeah, because citizen's of a country needs to be held responsible for everything their country ever did, regardless of wether they opposed it, didn't know about it, or weren't even alive. Great! One can't deny that the US has done a lot of sick and evil shit through it's time, but sympatizing with crazy, dogmatic nutjobs killing innocents is absurd - particularly when the one thing it accomplishes is more war, pain and hate. Of course, you can sympathize with whatever terrible events drove them to this, but not the acts themselves, just like we should in no way sympathize with the US supporting dictators and assassinating/removing eleceted officials.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I agree with Solitary. I honestly don't blame the terrorists. I sympathize with them. The United States is by far one of the most evil countries in the entire world.

Thank you for attracting the NSA's full attention to this site and thread. I'll sleep better now. :roll:

[Nonsensei]

I agree with Solitary. I honestly don't blame the terrorists. I sympathize with them. The United States is by far one of the most evil countries in the entire world.

Thank you for attracting the NSA's full attention to this site and thread. I'll sleep better now. :roll:

Enough of your constant scoffing APA. We get it. You don't give a shit about civil liberties.

[NeoLogic26]

From a bunch of goddamned freethinkers, I can't believe how many of you are okay with governmental abuse.

I was going to say the same thing. Maybe I have too many preconceived ideas about how atheists actually think. It would seem to me that someone who valued independent thought and free speech would be saddened at how those things are becoming increasingly hollow at the hands of other people willing to let their government do things like this.

[surly74]

I agree with Solitary. I honestly don't blame the terrorists. I sympathize with them. The United States is by far one of the most evil countries in the entire world.

Yeah, because citizen's of a country needs to be held responsible for everything their country ever did, regardless of wether they opposed it, didn't know about it, or weren't even alive. Great! One can't deny that the US has done a lot of sick and evil shit through it's time, but sympatizing with crazy, dogmatic nutjobs killing innocents is absurd - particularly when the one thing it accomplishes is more war, pain and hate. Of course, you can sympathize with whatever terrible events drove them to this, but not the acts themselves, just like we should in no way sympathize with the US supporting dictators and assassinating/removing eleceted officials.

to a point, yes.

hope you didn't read the comments section of anything on the internet after the Boston bombings when it was thought the people that did it were middle eastern.

[GurrenLagann]

If there's anything I've learned from fiction and from history, it's that you tend to create your own enemies. But what some of you seem to be suggesting is that some events take place in a vacuum. You say that it's no wonder we've terrorists wanting to take us down given what we've done, but such could just as easily be pushed back by saying something like "It's no wonder the US did evil thing X given what country Y did to it."

Basically, I don't see how you could be consistent in this line of reasoning merely by placing an arbitrary stopping point to support one example, but not others.


Anyhow, I don't like really buy this claim of preventing 50 attacks, nor do I really like phone tapping or government access to email. However, despite being illegal for obvious reasons, I do have to wonder whether or not this is a true dichotomy: More (potential) security against terrorist attacks or being more likely to be caught off guard by them. Governments are pretty much guaranteed to have to do unscrupulous things for sometimes defensible reasons (espionage and torture during war, for example), so this may in fact be needed sometimes even if it doesn't sit well to say the least.

[stromboli]

Surveilling an entire population based on the belief that what, anyone is capable of suddenly being a terrorist? Bullshit. All they are doing is trotting out justification for ignoring the first and fourth amendments. They may have prevented 50 attacks. but not by eavesdropping on some farmer in Iowa. The intent and reason for a warrant is that it singles out individuals for specific reasons and has to show cause, removal of which is unconstitutional.

[Hurt]

The NSA is not just collecting metadata; phone numbers, closest cell tower, etc. You can build a PC with enough internal storage to hold a few lines of text per record for that.
They are collecting the contents of the phone calls, emails and their attachments, text messages. ALL OF IT.

The datacenter in Utah is not the only one, but even it it was it was built to hold more than metadata.

The NSA's Utah Data Center will be able to handle and process five zettabytes of data, according to William Binney, a former NSA technical director . Binney's calculation is an estimate. An NSA spokeswoman says the actual data capacity of the center is classified.

"They would have plenty of space with five zettabytes to store at least something on the order of 100 years worth of the worldwide communications, phones and emails and stuff like that," Binney asserts, "and then have plenty of space left over to do any kind of parallel processing to try to break codes."

//http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controversy-nsa-builds-its-biggest-data-farm

[Jason78]

Phone Spying Prevented '50 Attacks' Including NYC Plots

I don't care if it prevented 500 attacks.  I really don't.

Freedom is worth dying for.

[PopeyesPappy]

Interesting and relevant.

Using metadata to find Paul Revere

[Shiranu]

"It's no wonder the US did evil thing X given what country Y did to it."

Do you know much about America's involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War? If not, I would look it up... the only country that "did anything to us" was Iran who nationalized their oil company because the British were doing some severe human rights violations against Iranians. Props to the Brits though; they were smart enough to ask the CIA to do their work for them so America takes the blame, not England. I respect them for that one.

The rest were countries were over-threw so we could have ways of combating the "evil" communists without being held responsible.

[GurrenLagann]

"It's no wonder the US did evil thing X given what country Y did to it."

Do you know much about America's involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War? If not, I would look it up... the only country that "did anything to us" was Iran who nationalized their oil company because the British were doing some severe human rights violations against Iranians. Props to the Brits though; they were smart enough to ask the CIA to do their work for them so America takes the blame, not England. I respect them for that one.

I think you sort of missed my point. What I was getting at is that some of you are coming up with what seems an arbitrary termination point for blame, and then (at least tacitly) laying all the blame on the US for doing something horrible, as well as the blame for causing people in other countries to do horrible things. Again, I don't see how that's consistent. I'm certainly not defending the US' actions, it's just something that I think needs justifying.

[Hydra009]

APA, do you condone the police illegally searching your car or home? Then in their warrantless, illegal search they find, let's say, some marijuana, and they lock you up for it? You're okay with that? Because what you're saying is that the 4th Amendment just doesn't fucking matter, anymore. "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide!" I'm sure there are a few people here who do some illegal things....why not just bust down everyone's door and clean house, eh? It's for safety, citizen!

So, where does it end? Do we stop at "terrorism"? How far do we let them erode our constitutional rights because you simply don't give a fuck?

From a bunch of goddamned freethinkers, I can't believe how many of you are okay with governmental abuse.

RAMEN.

And it wasn't too terribly long ago that most of us were railing against NSA spying during the Bush administration.   #-o

[Farroc]

I agree with Solitary. I honestly don't blame the terrorists. I sympathize with them. The United States is by far one of the most evil countries in the entire world.

Yeah, because citizen's of a country needs to be held responsible for everything their country ever did, regardless of wether they opposed it, didn't know about it, or weren't even alive. Great! One can't deny that the US has done a lot of sick and evil shit through it's time, but sympatizing with crazy, dogmatic nutjobs killing innocents is absurd - particularly when the one thing it accomplishes is more war, pain and hate. Of course, you can sympathize with whatever terrible events drove them to this, but not the acts themselves, just like we should in no way sympathize with the US supporting dictators and assassinating/removing eleceted officials.

You misunderstood my post. I wasn't saying what terrorists do is right. It's not. It's horrible. What I was saying was that I do not blame them, and I can understand what drives them to do the horrible things that they do. Put yourselves in their shoes. Imagine you're just sitting in your village one day when, because the US military suspects there may be a terrorist there, they bomb the entire village with a drone strike, but you survived. Nobody else did. Your mom and dad, children, siblings, friends and everyone else and everything else you've ever known for your entire life is gone, killed, slaughtered, in an instant. Can you honestly say that there's no chance at all you wouldn't be the least bit psychotic? That you're morality and reasoning would be at all skewed? Some of them really are just evil sadists. But most of them only know one thing. America killed their families and ruined their lives. I'm not saying what they do is right. But I'm sure as hell not judging them either.

[Smartmarzipan]

I agree with Solitary. I honestly don't blame the terrorists. I sympathize with them. The United States is by far one of the most evil countries in the entire world.

I don't agree with this sentiment. While the United States has done some seriously awful shit, I absolutely do not sympathize with other people who do seriously awful shit. I do think that Gitmo is only breeding more terrorists and the US government does things that make terrorism worse, but there is no way I'm going to sympathize with people who kill innocents because they're pissed off at something. They're all bad and they all make this world a worse place to live in, and I give no shits about their "reasons".