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"And that did nothing to stop a much larger, more complex attack" Perhaps, but I think the best way to measure the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the prog
by adam419 11y ago
"And that did nothing to stop a much larger, more complex attack"
Perhaps, but I think the best way to measure the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the program is not the number of attacks that have slipped through, but the proportion of those that were prevented compared to those that slipped through.
- egroat 11y agoUnless of course the program contributes to causing those attacks in the first place. Now? Probably not. 20 years time? Perhaps.
- tsunamifury 11y agoThis is impossible. One of the problems with the blatant misuse of forecasting is governments using it it to compare outrageous black swan futures against real history. It leads to claiming that "spying on everyone 24/7 to prevent an infinite number of terror attacks" is in everyones interest. The reality is that a limited number of black-swan terror attacks is actually a minimal cost compared to destroying social fabric modern western society is built on. This type of false thinking is what allows government officials to manipulate public thought into agreeing to give up their rights. This has literally led to the FBI radicalizing young men in order to 'catch them' in the act -- thus justifying their existence by creating the very black-swan event they are supposed to stop.
- hokkos 11y agoFor now it seems that terrorist attacks made more impact on social fabric than US or French surveillance.
- loup-vaillant 11y agoWell, they did enable government to implement those surveillance programs. It was already in the works, but terrorism is a wonderful pretext (along with paedophilia, Nazism, and starving authors).
- revelation 11y agoSoo... which were prevented? These must somehow end up as court cases eventually, right? Didn't think so.
- talmand 11y agoThose cases are handled in "secret courts" run by "secret judges" with "secret prosecutors". Apparently the defense counsel is also secret since they don't come out afterwards to say what happened to their clients. Assuming the prosecuted had defense counsel.
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoMeasuring how much something did not happen looks pretty tough. I have a lucky rabbit's foot, and I have not been attacked by a bear. How many bear attacks has my lucky rabbit's foot prevented? Seven? A million? Either an informed electorate runs the country or the security services do. That sounds like a false dichotomy, but if all of the important information is classified, and voters are prevented from becoming informed (which is what the security services want)? I don't see how the system can continue to operate. And that doesn't begin to address the catastrophic civil liberties problems the surveillance state brings. I'm just wondering who is in charge.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pharrington 11y agoWhen developing complex and robust systems, the measure of effectiveness of a program is how little the original system changes in response to new stimulus. If the system constantly needs to change, it's not meeting the stating requirements.