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Sure it's creepy, but there's also something else I've been suspecting about all this surveillance for years: it doesn't really work. Moral, ethical, and polit

by api 11y ago

Sure it's creepy, but there's also something else I've been suspecting about all this surveillance for years: it doesn't really work. Moral, ethical, and political problems aside is mass surveillance snake oil? Is there really any credible evidence that mass surveillance has stopped any significant terror attacks? Can you really find needles in haystacks reliably without drowning in false positives?

selectron 11y ago
It is possible that no significant terror attacks were even attempted against the US since 9/11. And if an attack was stopped they wouldn't necessarily want to publish how they stopped it. So it is impossible to really know if the surveillance does anything.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > It is possible that no significant terror attacks were even attempted against the US since 9/11 The TSA itself has literally admitted that there is no evidence of terrorist plots against aviation in the US[0]. That doesn't cover everything that could be possibly labeled 'terrorism', but given that piece of evidence, it does raise more than a little doubt about the prevalence of threats elsewhere. [0] https://boingboing.net/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-terrorists-in-ame.html https://boingboing.net/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-terrorists-in-a....
  - ethanbond 11y ago
    Since when is the TSA an intelligence service? They're mall cops.
- us0r 11y ago
  >And if an attack was stopped they wouldn't necessarily want to publish how they stopped it. So it is impossible to really know if the surveillance does anything. A trial, send a group to gitmo, a drone strike? If they could provide an example it would be plastered all over the place. Hell they even post youtube videos of their drone work - https://www.youtube.com/user/centcom/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/centcom/videos.
- woodman 11y ago
  > So it is impossible to really know if the surveillance does anything. We know that it has a chilling effect, and the likelihood of it actually performing the stated mission is really low. We've had several massive leaks, but the one place that evidence would have definitely shown up would have been the DOS cable leak - because it was an unfiltered dump. While SIGINT certainly shouldn't appear in anything below top-secret, there would be hints. The stratfor leak would have contained hints as well, due to all the candid emails discussing intel from gov sources (see access to OBL intel cache for an example). Also, the FBI would likely brag about more than their sorry list of terrorist entrapment cases. One can't make the claim that operational SIGINT is so special that it never leaks, because that is one of the classified emails found on Clinton's private server - emailed from a former government worker that shouldn't have had access in the first place.
- kevinnk 11y ago
  What would you consider "significant"? There's been a number of terrorist attacks post 9/11 and I'd consider at least a couple pretty significant (San Bernardino, Fort Hood, Boston Marathon, Charleston Church). There's been a number of foiled plots too: see http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks... and http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/nsa-analysis.html http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/nsa-analysis.h...
CamperBob2 11y ago
Mass surveillance isn't about being able to spy on everybody, it's about being able to spy on anybody. That's basically what companies like Palantir facilitate. If you work there, you may be a bad person, and you should probably feel bad. I watched "All the President's Men" on Amazon last night. Through practically every scene, I couldn't help thinking, What if people like this had the technology to keep from getting caught? It would (will) be a very different movie, to say the least.
- dbt00 11y ago
  I worked there for 7+ years, I'm not a bad person, and I don't feel bad. If you're opposed to a surveillance state, you should care deeply about preventing future terrorist attacks. I was someone who spent a lot of time thinking and caring about privacy and overreaching law enforcement in the '90s. When the original PATRIOT act was passed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, they weren't based on a deeply nuanced understanding of the intelligence failures that lead up to that event. They were a laundry list of things that the FBI (and others) had been proposing for years that they immediately dusted off and rammed through a congress terrified to say no. If you want to roll back the surveillance state, you have to actually empower people carrying out anti-terrorism to intelligently correlate data gathered through lawful and privacy-respecting means to succeed in their mission so that lawmakers and voters trust their own safety to allow that to happen -- and prevent as many massive terrorist attacks as possible, because every one that succeeds will lead to more demands for more data and whatever it takes. Palantir was specifically founded to give the authorities the right tools to solve anti-terrorism based on a focused dataset. The tools aren't designed around mass surveillance nor is anyone I know who works there interested in or motivated to solve that particular problem.
  - forgetsusername 11y ago
    >I'm not a bad person When push comes to shove, your personal opinion on whether you're good or bad is irrelevant. Others might judge you differently. I've said it before; if we ever have a violent proletariat uprising, I think there will be a few people here who are surprised to see what side they're considered "on". The HBGary leaks showed a slide deck of Palantir suggesting a few very underhanded tricks to kill WikiLeaks and discredit people trying to do "good" work, for money. How and why is that acceptable?

by api 11y ago

selectron 11y ago

It is possible that no significant terror attacks were even attempted against the US since 9/11. And if an attack was stopped they wouldn't necessarily want to publish how they stopped it. So it is impossible to really know if the surveillance does anything.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> It is possible that no significant terror attacks were even attempted against the US since 9/11 The TSA itself has literally admitted that there is no evidence of terrorist plots against aviation in the US[0]. That doesn't cover everything that could be possibly labeled 'terrorism', but given that piece of evidence, it does raise more than a little doubt about the prevalence of threats elsewhere. [0] https://boingboing.net/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-terrorists-in-ame.html https://boingboing.net/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-terrorists-in-a....
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Since when is the TSA an intelligence service? They're mall cops.
us0r 11y ago
>And if an attack was stopped they wouldn't necessarily want to publish how they stopped it. So it is impossible to really know if the surveillance does anything. A trial, send a group to gitmo, a drone strike? If they could provide an example it would be plastered all over the place. Hell they even post youtube videos of their drone work - https://www.youtube.com/user/centcom/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/centcom/videos.
woodman 11y ago
> So it is impossible to really know if the surveillance does anything. We know that it has a chilling effect, and the likelihood of it actually performing the stated mission is really low. We've had several massive leaks, but the one place that evidence would have definitely shown up would have been the DOS cable leak - because it was an unfiltered dump. While SIGINT certainly shouldn't appear in anything below top-secret, there would be hints. The stratfor leak would have contained hints as well, due to all the candid emails discussing intel from gov sources (see access to OBL intel cache for an example). Also, the FBI would likely brag about more than their sorry list of terrorist entrapment cases. One can't make the claim that operational SIGINT is so special that it never leaks, because that is one of the classified emails found on Clinton's private server - emailed from a former government worker that shouldn't have had access in the first place.
kevinnk 11y ago
What would you consider "significant"? There's been a number of terrorist attacks post 9/11 and I'd consider at least a couple pretty significant (San Bernardino, Fort Hood, Boston Marathon, Charleston Church). There's been a number of foiled plots too: see http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks... and http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/nsa-analysis.html http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/nsa-analysis.h...

CamperBob2 11y ago

Mass surveillance isn't about being able to spy on everybody, it's about being able to spy on anybody. That's basically what companies like Palantir facilitate. If you work there, you may be a bad person, and you should probably feel bad. I watched "All the President's Men" on Amazon last night. Through practically every scene, I couldn't help thinking, What if people like this had the technology to keep from getting caught? It would (will) be a very different movie, to say the least.

dbt00 11y ago
I worked there for 7+ years, I'm not a bad person, and I don't feel bad. If you're opposed to a surveillance state, you should care deeply about preventing future terrorist attacks. I was someone who spent a lot of time thinking and caring about privacy and overreaching law enforcement in the '90s. When the original PATRIOT act was passed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, they weren't based on a deeply nuanced understanding of the intelligence failures that lead up to that event. They were a laundry list of things that the FBI (and others) had been proposing for years that they immediately dusted off and rammed through a congress terrified to say no. If you want to roll back the surveillance state, you have to actually empower people carrying out anti-terrorism to intelligently correlate data gathered through lawful and privacy-respecting means to succeed in their mission so that lawmakers and voters trust their own safety to allow that to happen -- and prevent as many massive terrorist attacks as possible, because every one that succeeds will lead to more demands for more data and whatever it takes. Palantir was specifically founded to give the authorities the right tools to solve anti-terrorism based on a focused dataset. The tools aren't designed around mass surveillance nor is anyone I know who works there interested in or motivated to solve that particular problem.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >I'm not a bad person When push comes to shove, your personal opinion on whether you're good or bad is irrelevant. Others might judge you differently. I've said it before; if we ever have a violent proletariat uprising, I think there will be a few people here who are surprised to see what side they're considered "on". The HBGary leaks showed a slide deck of Palantir suggesting a few very underhanded tricks to kill WikiLeaks and discredit people trying to do "good" work, for money. How and why is that acceptable?