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How many crimes have been prevented in the last 20 years thanks to the surveillance powers of the USA PATRIOT Act? Last I’d heard the answer was zero. The priv
by elliekelly 5y ago
How many crimes have been prevented in the last 20 years thanks to the surveillance powers of the USA PATRIOT Act? Last I’d heard the answer was zero.
The privacy/security trade-off is vastly overstated.
- azinman2 5y agoBe curious where you've heard that from, because the results will largely be kept secret. Regardless, there are far more ordinary crimes being committed than terrorism.
- kilna 5y agoThose who want to keep the current draconian status quo in place are incentivized to make public any wins, it would justify the existence of the extreme measures. The fact that they haven't boasted about any win is telling.
- dane-pgp 5y agoYes, and we should also be aware of a rhetorical strategy used by surveillance state apologists where they alternate between "The lack of recent terrorist attacks proves that mass surveillance works, so we should extend it to fight other crimes" and "The recent attack shows that we need more surveillance powers to protect ourselves".
- lazide 5y agoThe beauty of the argument is it can never be disproved because all success or failures theoretically need to be kept secret no? Would YOU be happy spending trillions of dollars with no way to see if it was accomplishing anything, while clear negative effects were also occurring?