3 ms·

It propably at least changed the search behavior of the Bad Guys.

• Tloewald 12y ago
  Stupid bad guys. Smart ones already assumed the NSA was poring through everything.
  • aluhut 12y ago
    Of course. As well as there will still be some that are even more stupid so we can have nice statistics about how successful the new tools are.
  • csandreasen 12y ago
    Take a look at the average violent criminal. The stupid ones are just as dangerous as the smart ones, and there's a lot more of them.
    • bediger4000 12y ago
      Terrorists aren't much like criminals. For a start, they're ideologically motivated. And that's the argument for why we as a society, need to treat terrorists differently than criminals in the first place. There's only a very, very few terrorists, even when the US government has done its level best to create as many as possible. I doubt we can take a quantitative argument like yours and get decent results.
      • csandreasen 12y ago
        The term "bad guys" is much broader than just terrorist. Feel free to substitute "drug smugglers", "human traffickers", "members of organized crime groups", "militant extremists", or, yes, even "terrorists". Nor did I make any argument as to how to handle any of them. The point is that you don't have to be smart to cause harm. The smart ones were presumably harder to track beforehand; the not-so-smart ones are likely a lot smarter now.