>"You're not allowed to know everything but you have to prevent everything" These programs have been in place since at least the Clinton years, yet that didn't

>"You're not allowed to know everything but you have to prevent everything" These programs have been in place since at least the Clinton years, yet that didn't stop, say, 9/11. Nor did it stop the recent Boston bombers. Cases we do see stopped are often by lone nutters "buying" terror materials from law enforcement agents posing as terrorits. Kudos for catching these guys, but they are completely unsophisticated enemies. The sophisticated ones don't go on AOL chat asking for plastic explosives. There are probably practical limits with SIGINT domestically. I think the argument that stopping crime is just like detecting a hacker on your network is fairly weak sauce. Our prevention outcomes will probably be the same if we started cutting these programs.