why should it be dependent upon techies to stop those events, they are not getting funding to do that. The NSA, FBI, CIA, GCHQ et al are being funded expressly

why should it be dependent upon techies to stop those events, they are not getting funding to do that. The NSA, FBI, CIA, GCHQ et al are being funded expressly for that purpose and are failing to achieve those aims. what they are doing is hoovering up every piece of electronic data they can regardless of whether there is a need or use for it. I think that actually " all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here" need to spend their time designing and creating better tech that doesnt allow the alphabet soup agencies the option to spy on people in such a broad fahsion, making it expensive and difficult to spy on everyone means they have to spend more time looking for the people worth spying on and only spying when they think it is worthwhile and going to lead to something. what happens now is they spy on everyone, then after an incident go backwards through the data to see what led up to the incident. Which is useless to all the dead and inujured and usually only works to point out where these agencies missed opportunities to prevent the attack. To give you an example, the recent terrorist hostage taking in Sydney, there was no warning or raising of the terror threat prior to the incident by the Australian Secret Services, although they are fully involved in the spying and are linked with the NSA and GCHQ. After the event we find out that there were double digit warnings provided by members of the public to a information line put in place to act as a confidential way to raise a concern. If they didnt rely on spying on everyone they would be in a better position to investigate tips such as this and focus all (or more) of their resources on these individuals instead of spreading it thinly across everyone.