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This is pretty amusing, but they've just made a classic apologists mistake. Either they need all this access and funding to surveil a large number of dangerous

This is pretty amusing, but they've just made a classic apologists mistake. Either they need all this access and funding to surveil a large number of dangerous people, or they dont need either to surveil such a small number of people. If it only resulted in 300 phone numbers to track, then sure, maybe the privacy violations weren't as bad (hypothetically). But that argument then puts the whole program at a ridiculous cost to threat ratio, and should be shutdown because it isn't effective at all and is a waste of taxpayer money. Lose, Lose NSA - You're either violating our liberties or wasting our money.

mpyne 13y ago
Are you saying that the U.S. has more than ~300 people overseas actively working on terror plots at any given time? You can't represent cost:threat ratio as dollars per person tracked. The major reason for why the program exists is to detect and break-up one-off major terrorist plots so even if the NSA was detecting all worldwide terror plans against the U.S. the number of people they were tracking would never be very high. This is what all the people saying that the risk of dying from terrorism is so completely low have been reminding us, remember?
- comefrom10 13y ago
  Perhaps if the US government wants to protect us from terrorism it should stop acting like a terrorist organization abroad.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    What was the excuse for 9/11 then? I seem to recall it was nothing more "terroristic" than having U.S. forces deployed in Saudi Arabia, at the request of that nation. But let me guess, victim blaming is OK, as long as the victims are Americans?
    - comefrom10 13y ago
      I didn't blame victims in that post. Perhaps I should be more certain about what the US is doing abroad before saying what I said, but I have gotten the impression that the US government's track record has been less than stellar, e.g. Operation Ajax.
- tomrod 13y ago
  > You can't represent cost:threat ratio as dollars per person tracked Sure you can. If you're only using the program to track 300 people, the average cost is the total cost divided by 300. As you point out, there is a very small risk of dying from a terrorist plot is low. So if we're spending so much money and only tracking 300 people, there is clearly a problem.
brown9-2 13y ago
I think a large part of the picture is being lost in the title of this submission. It's not that the NSA's entire mission has boiled down to monitoring 300 phone numbers worldwide. What is being stated is that "[l]ast year, fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against the database of millions of U.S. phone records gathered daily by the NSA". (http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2021199412_nsatechdataxml.html http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2021199412_nsatechd...)
- Brushfire 13y ago
  I guess my point was that if they only use it 300 times, is it really worth having the program around given the combo of costs both in privacy and dollars? Of course there is more at play here, but they should be selling how many terrorist attacks they avoided, now how many people they snooped.
  - vlasev 13y ago
    Would you know WHICH 300 phones to check without the program?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - mattnewton 13y ago
    This. The privacy cost is relevant and not easily quantifiable.
threeseed 13y ago
But that argument then puts the whole program at a ridiculous cost to threat ratio. Sorry but this is just nonsense. Major terrorist acts e.g. 9/11 have a devastating impact on the economy. It results in a country-wide drop in consumer spending, consumer confidence, business spending, business confidence, hiring etc. As well as locally in areas like tourism. It alone accounted for a 1.1% drop in the third quarter GDP in 2011. As an example in NYC alone 430,000 jobs and 2.8 billion in wages were lost in the 3 months after 9/11. Which in turn results in a big drop in the tax collected. Then finally there is the after effects. No 9/11 and there would have been no costly invasion into Iraq/Afghanistan which has cost trillions of dollars and an obscene number of lives. Major terrorist acts always demand a response by the public. So out of all the things the government does protecting its citizens seems like something that will always be "worth the money".
- stretchwithme 13y ago
  There are many threats to human life. There is a cost associated with preventing each life lost. Obviously it makes sense to consider it. We could have never allowed foreign tourists into the country. That has a cost associated with it, right? That would prevented Saudis from going to flight school and booking those flights, right? Shouldn't protecting lives be before every other consideration? No, we have to balance things. Protecting life can not prevent us from living our lives. Not everything the government chooses to do is worth the price.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    If we're going with a cost/benefit analysis, it should be noted that the NSA accessing data that AT&T, Google, Facebook, etc, already collect is just about the cheapest sort of counter-measure you could have to terrorism. The "good old fashioned police work" that people keep suggesting would be far more expensive and invasive.
    - stretchwithme 13y ago
      Then let people volunteer for it in exchange for lower taxes. If the impact is truly minor, there should be many takers and much savings.

mpyne 13y ago

Are you saying that the U.S. has more than ~300 people overseas actively working on terror plots at any given time? You can't represent cost:threat ratio as dollars per person tracked. The major reason for why the program exists is to detect and break-up one-off major terrorist plots so even if the NSA was detecting all worldwide terror plans against the U.S. the number of people they were tracking would never be very high. This is what all the people saying that the risk of dying from terrorism is so completely low have been reminding us, remember?

comefrom10 13y ago
Perhaps if the US government wants to protect us from terrorism it should stop acting like a terrorist organization abroad.
- mpyne 13y ago
  What was the excuse for 9/11 then? I seem to recall it was nothing more "terroristic" than having U.S. forces deployed in Saudi Arabia, at the request of that nation. But let me guess, victim blaming is OK, as long as the victims are Americans?
  - comefrom10 13y ago
    I didn't blame victims in that post. Perhaps I should be more certain about what the US is doing abroad before saying what I said, but I have gotten the impression that the US government's track record has been less than stellar, e.g. Operation Ajax.
tomrod 13y ago
> You can't represent cost:threat ratio as dollars per person tracked Sure you can. If you're only using the program to track 300 people, the average cost is the total cost divided by 300. As you point out, there is a very small risk of dying from a terrorist plot is low. So if we're spending so much money and only tracking 300 people, there is clearly a problem.

brown9-2 13y ago

I think a large part of the picture is being lost in the title of this submission. It's not that the NSA's entire mission has boiled down to monitoring 300 phone numbers worldwide. What is being stated is that "[l]ast year, fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against the database of millions of U.S. phone records gathered daily by the NSA". (http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2021199412_nsatechdataxml.html http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2021199412_nsatechd...)

Brushfire 13y ago
I guess my point was that if they only use it 300 times, is it really worth having the program around given the combo of costs both in privacy and dollars? Of course there is more at play here, but they should be selling how many terrorist attacks they avoided, now how many people they snooped.
- vlasev 13y ago
  Would you know WHICH 300 phones to check without the program?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- mattnewton 13y ago
  This. The privacy cost is relevant and not easily quantifiable.

threeseed 13y ago

But that argument then puts the whole program at a ridiculous cost to threat ratio. Sorry but this is just nonsense. Major terrorist acts e.g. 9/11 have a devastating impact on the economy. It results in a country-wide drop in consumer spending, consumer confidence, business spending, business confidence, hiring etc. As well as locally in areas like tourism. It alone accounted for a 1.1% drop in the third quarter GDP in 2011. As an example in NYC alone 430,000 jobs and 2.8 billion in wages were lost in the 3 months after 9/11. Which in turn results in a big drop in the tax collected. Then finally there is the after effects. No 9/11 and there would have been no costly invasion into Iraq/Afghanistan which has cost trillions of dollars and an obscene number of lives. Major terrorist acts always demand a response by the public. So out of all the things the government does protecting its citizens seems like something that will always be "worth the money".

stretchwithme 13y ago
There are many threats to human life. There is a cost associated with preventing each life lost. Obviously it makes sense to consider it. We could have never allowed foreign tourists into the country. That has a cost associated with it, right? That would prevented Saudis from going to flight school and booking those flights, right? Shouldn't protecting lives be before every other consideration? No, we have to balance things. Protecting life can not prevent us from living our lives. Not everything the government chooses to do is worth the price.
- rayiner 13y ago
  If we're going with a cost/benefit analysis, it should be noted that the NSA accessing data that AT&T, Google, Facebook, etc, already collect is just about the cheapest sort of counter-measure you could have to terrorism. The "good old fashioned police work" that people keep suggesting would be far more expensive and invasive.
  - stretchwithme 13y ago
    Then let people volunteer for it in exchange for lower taxes. If the impact is truly minor, there should be many takers and much savings.