8 ms·

You'd think if it had stopped any attacks, the program's proponents would be shouting it from the rooftops. But no- nothing. Not even attempts to lie ("oh, we s

You'd think if it had stopped any attacks, the program's proponents would be shouting it from the rooftops. But no- nothing. Not even attempts to lie ("oh, we stopped several attacks, but we can't tell you anything about them...") PRISM is a phenomenal waste of trust and money.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
beagle3 6y ago
> PRISM is a phenomenal waste of trust and money. Only if you believe its stated purpose is its real purpose. I suspect it's actually a huge success if you measure it against its real purpose.
- nobleach 6y ago
  I'm not asking in an accusatory manor, I'm generally curious. What do you think it's real purpose is?
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    Increased power for the people that control it. (With a bonus side effect of lots of government dollars funneled to certain Contractors.)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - fsflover 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes
alehul 6y ago
I have, maybe naively, always believed that the U.S. operates at a level of secrecy and complexity where dozens of terrorist attacks are thwarted every year, and that this surveillance plays a hand in it (but to admit that would hinder its effectiveness). Is it really possible we only have <5 terror plots against our country in a given year, considering the population of our country, the amount of ideological extremism domestically and internationally, and the States' interventionism? Maybe it is possible, in which case the U.S. has been very successful at convincing my generation it's a larger issue than it really is (I was a toddler when 9/11 happened, so it's all I know).
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  If you subscribe to a definition of "terrorist attack" that includes "someone with political beliefs I don't like possessing a handgun in violation of the law" then sure, dozens per year thwarted sounds about right.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    There is still a lot of unrest in Portland and Seattle, but Federal police (US Marshals, FBI, BORTAC, et. al.) have used regular old police work (cameras, under cover anarchists, wiretaps with warrants) to arrest a ton of these people when the city prosecutors simply wouldn't do a damn thing or catch and release them. Now many of these people are facing federal crimes. You can get some serious years for swinging a sledge hammer at a US Marshal, as what happened at the Federal Courthouse in Portland. (Remember, three of those Feds are now blind in at least one eye from the green lasers?) But the Anarchists/Antifa types that are burning down Portland are also being thrown together with the McCloskeys who were arrested for having guns out, while on their lawn, after people broke into their gated community. Or Jake Gardner, who the DA ruled as acting in self defense, with a full video clearly showing him acting in self defense after both he and his father were attached. We're starting to see real terrorists conflated with what are clearly political prisoners from local officials.
    - cjwhite 6y ago
      MORE FOX NEWS PLEASE
    - macintux 6y ago
      You’re not going to garner much sympathy for the McCloskeys. One vital rule of gun handling is to never point it at something until you’re ready to shoot, and she pointed it at people with her finger on the trigger.
      - UncleEntity 6y ago
        > One vital rule of gun handling is to never point it at something until you’re ready to shoot... Not so much, never point a gun at something unless you're willing to shoot -- a double barrel shotgun has a lot of power to make someone rethink their life choices when pointed at them without having to actually shoot.
FerretFred 6y ago
"oh, we stopped several attacks, but we can't tell you anything about them..." This!
bastardoperator 6y ago
They're not going to tell you about wins or loses, it would be silly to think otherwise. I'm not saying I agree with the program in any capacity, but those of us that have worked with government have a simple saying "loose lips sink ships".
- Zigurd 6y ago
  The reality is that actual terrorism makes the papers, and real terrorists get tried and convicted. This is just mystery-mongering by people with nothing to do but defend a budget.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  We read about the loses in the news, because people are killed and injured. We hear about the wins too. The whole Bin Laden raid was a massive publicity coup for the Obama administration. It was shouted from the rooftops. If a president can point to something in an election year and go "see, see there, I made you people safer," they will.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    I subscribe to this belief as well. Presidents have the power to declassify information at will, and I haven't been alive to see a president that isn't spending lots of time singing their own praises; popularity contests tend to select people of that ilk.
- mtgx 6y ago
  Oh, no. They'll make sure to tell everyone of how successful their operations were through "anonymous government sources." It seems a lot of people continue to be very naive about this issue and have a "trust the government by default" stance, even on a forum of more educated and more well informed people like this one.
dhimes 6y ago
I would think the opposite: If the program was greatly effective, I would want a blog post just like this to capture the bad guys' attention. That way they might tend to be less careful and make it easier on me.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  why? even if you are extremely confident in your ability to thwart terrorists, wouldn't it be better to discourage them to the point where they don't even try?
  - dhimes 6y ago
    Oh definitely discourage them, but don't give away how you know. In the defense world the secrets are usually classified lower (sometimes much more so) than the sources.
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
Yeah, at least the CIA claimed that "enhanced interrogation techniques" was yielding actionable intelligence. I remember a story from years ago that some lab was working on a lens for a satellite for the NSA with a resolution that would be able to discern different coins on the ground from space. They were complaining that, after all their work, the job was cancelled, and they weren't going to get paid. What it meant, of course, was that they had found a better alternative. The fact that the NSA isn't even bothering to lie about this is telling. The linked article says they won't even be trying to get Congress to let them continue the process, and this is even more telling. But what it's telling me ISN'T that it does not work, and it's certainly not because they suddenly grew a conscience about the Constitution. It's just that they don't need this particular vector to get the sigint they're looking for now.
- Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago
  Regarding the story that you recalled some years back - There is conjecture that the HST (Hubble Space Telescope) repurposed some NSA technology. Not exactly a definitive source but Wikipedia has some details. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3448/was-hubble-really-related-to-spy-satellites/ https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3448/was-hubble-re... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  Identifying a coin from orbit is almost certainly physically impossible due to the diffraction limit[0] and the maximum payload diameter of existing space launch vehicles. As for the PRISM replacement, it's fair to assume that the NSA simply buys whatever social contact graphs it wants from Facebook and commercial data brokers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system
throwaway91914 6y ago
> PRISM is a phenomenal waste of trust and money. Surveillance is about gaining power through information asymmetry. Spying on military, political or FINANCIAL targets is worth trillions. It has nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with political hegemony.
failuser 6y ago
One reason not to do that is to hide your methods. The usual tactic to show good anti-terrorist results is to inject provocateurs into fringe groups and paint them as thwarted terrorists. I hope that US is not going that route.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  The US already has gone down that route. Most of the Islamist terrorist plots federal authorities have 'broken up' over the past twenty years have involved undercover agents leading on people who are too dysfunctional to be dangerous to do things for which they can be convicted.
anarazel 6y ago
There's been a lot of statements about the efficacy of parts of PRISM, just not about the metadata collection. Obviously not the end-all-be-all but the PCLOB reports about 215 and 702 are worth skimming. 215: https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/ec542143-1079-424a-84b3-acc354698560/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Records_Program.pdf https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/e... 702: https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/823399ae-92ea-447a-ab60-0da28b555437/702-Report-2.pdf https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/8...
hashtagmarkup 6y ago
> Not even attempts to lie ("oh, we stopped several attacks, but we can't tell you anything about them...") What if that wasn't a lie? If they truly couldn't tell you "anything" about them, they couldn't even acknowledge they existed. Whether or not a government should be allowed to keep such secrets is another matter.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

beagle3 6y ago

> PRISM is a phenomenal waste of trust and money. Only if you believe its stated purpose is its real purpose. I suspect it's actually a huge success if you measure it against its real purpose.

nobleach 6y ago
I'm not asking in an accusatory manor, I'm generally curious. What do you think it's real purpose is?
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  Increased power for the people that control it. (With a bonus side effect of lots of government dollars funneled to certain Contractors.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fsflover 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes

alehul 6y ago

I have, maybe naively, always believed that the U.S. operates at a level of secrecy and complexity where dozens of terrorist attacks are thwarted every year, and that this surveillance plays a hand in it (but to admit that would hinder its effectiveness). Is it really possible we only have <5 terror plots against our country in a given year, considering the population of our country, the amount of ideological extremism domestically and internationally, and the States' interventionism? Maybe it is possible, in which case the U.S. has been very successful at convincing my generation it's a larger issue than it really is (I was a toddler when 9/11 happened, so it's all I know).

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
If you subscribe to a definition of "terrorist attack" that includes "someone with political beliefs I don't like possessing a handgun in violation of the law" then sure, dozens per year thwarted sounds about right.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  There is still a lot of unrest in Portland and Seattle, but Federal police (US Marshals, FBI, BORTAC, et. al.) have used regular old police work (cameras, under cover anarchists, wiretaps with warrants) to arrest a ton of these people when the city prosecutors simply wouldn't do a damn thing or catch and release them. Now many of these people are facing federal crimes. You can get some serious years for swinging a sledge hammer at a US Marshal, as what happened at the Federal Courthouse in Portland. (Remember, three of those Feds are now blind in at least one eye from the green lasers?) But the Anarchists/Antifa types that are burning down Portland are also being thrown together with the McCloskeys who were arrested for having guns out, while on their lawn, after people broke into their gated community. Or Jake Gardner, who the DA ruled as acting in self defense, with a full video clearly showing him acting in self defense after both he and his father were attached. We're starting to see real terrorists conflated with what are clearly political prisoners from local officials.
  - cjwhite 6y ago
    MORE FOX NEWS PLEASE
  - macintux 6y ago
    You’re not going to garner much sympathy for the McCloskeys. One vital rule of gun handling is to never point it at something until you’re ready to shoot, and she pointed it at people with her finger on the trigger.
    - UncleEntity 6y ago
      > One vital rule of gun handling is to never point it at something until you’re ready to shoot... Not so much, never point a gun at something unless you're willing to shoot -- a double barrel shotgun has a lot of power to make someone rethink their life choices when pointed at them without having to actually shoot.

FerretFred 6y ago

"oh, we stopped several attacks, but we can't tell you anything about them..." This!

bastardoperator 6y ago

They're not going to tell you about wins or loses, it would be silly to think otherwise. I'm not saying I agree with the program in any capacity, but those of us that have worked with government have a simple saying "loose lips sink ships".

Zigurd 6y ago
The reality is that actual terrorism makes the papers, and real terrorists get tried and convicted. This is just mystery-mongering by people with nothing to do but defend a budget.
phobosanomaly 6y ago
We read about the loses in the news, because people are killed and injured. We hear about the wins too. The whole Bin Laden raid was a massive publicity coup for the Obama administration. It was shouted from the rooftops. If a president can point to something in an election year and go "see, see there, I made you people safer," they will.
- craftinator 6y ago
  I subscribe to this belief as well. Presidents have the power to declassify information at will, and I haven't been alive to see a president that isn't spending lots of time singing their own praises; popularity contests tend to select people of that ilk.
mtgx 6y ago
Oh, no. They'll make sure to tell everyone of how successful their operations were through "anonymous government sources." It seems a lot of people continue to be very naive about this issue and have a "trust the government by default" stance, even on a forum of more educated and more well informed people like this one.

dhimes 6y ago

I would think the opposite: If the program was greatly effective, I would want a blog post just like this to capture the bad guys' attention. That way they might tend to be less careful and make it easier on me.

leetcrew 6y ago
why? even if you are extremely confident in your ability to thwart terrorists, wouldn't it be better to discourage them to the point where they don't even try?
- dhimes 6y ago
  Oh definitely discourage them, but don't give away how you know. In the defense world the secrets are usually classified lower (sometimes much more so) than the sources.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

Yeah, at least the CIA claimed that "enhanced interrogation techniques" was yielding actionable intelligence. I remember a story from years ago that some lab was working on a lens for a satellite for the NSA with a resolution that would be able to discern different coins on the ground from space. They were complaining that, after all their work, the job was cancelled, and they weren't going to get paid. What it meant, of course, was that they had found a better alternative. The fact that the NSA isn't even bothering to lie about this is telling. The linked article says they won't even be trying to get Congress to let them continue the process, and this is even more telling. But what it's telling me ISN'T that it does not work, and it's certainly not because they suddenly grew a conscience about the Constitution. It's just that they don't need this particular vector to get the sigint they're looking for now.

Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago
Regarding the story that you recalled some years back - There is conjecture that the HST (Hubble Space Telescope) repurposed some NSA technology. Not exactly a definitive source but Wikipedia has some details. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3448/was-hubble-really-related-to-spy-satellites/ https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3448/was-hubble-re... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen
bleepblorp 6y ago
Identifying a coin from orbit is almost certainly physically impossible due to the diffraction limit[0] and the maximum payload diameter of existing space launch vehicles. As for the PRISM replacement, it's fair to assume that the NSA simply buys whatever social contact graphs it wants from Facebook and commercial data brokers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system

throwaway91914 6y ago

> PRISM is a phenomenal waste of trust and money. Surveillance is about gaining power through information asymmetry. Spying on military, political or FINANCIAL targets is worth trillions. It has nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with political hegemony.

failuser 6y ago

One reason not to do that is to hide your methods. The usual tactic to show good anti-terrorist results is to inject provocateurs into fringe groups and paint them as thwarted terrorists. I hope that US is not going that route.

bleepblorp 6y ago
The US already has gone down that route. Most of the Islamist terrorist plots federal authorities have 'broken up' over the past twenty years have involved undercover agents leading on people who are too dysfunctional to be dangerous to do things for which they can be convicted.

anarazel 6y ago

There's been a lot of statements about the efficacy of parts of PRISM, just not about the metadata collection. Obviously not the end-all-be-all but the PCLOB reports about 215 and 702 are worth skimming. 215: https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/ec542143-1079-424a-84b3-acc354698560/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Records_Program.pdf https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/e... 702: https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/823399ae-92ea-447a-ab60-0da28b555437/702-Report-2.pdf https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/8...

hashtagmarkup 6y ago

> Not even attempts to lie ("oh, we stopped several attacks, but we can't tell you anything about them...") What if that wasn't a lie? If they truly couldn't tell you "anything" about them, they couldn't even acknowledge they existed. Whether or not a government should be allowed to keep such secrets is another matter.