I think it's more interesting to wonder how it's possible for the US to be surprised by movements like ISIS or by random shooters when surveillance is supposed to be total.
Obviously there are many ways in which information can be lost between source and policy. But it's still strange that some events appear to be a complete surprise.
If Snowden and Campbell are correct, they really shouldn't be.
There's the possibility that total electronic surveillance is real and that it's no good at countering the kind of threats it supposedly is used against.
If you want conspiracy, consider this: what impact did the #occupy movement have on the world order? That certainly was more dangerous to the establishment than someone scaring the population with terror attacks.
Or if you believe the official story: who are all the people assassinated with extra-legal (from an international law perspective, anyway) drone strikes in Yemen? Are they enemies of the US?
> what impact did the #occupy movement have on the world order?
Exactly none? People just shouted for a while, maybe burned a few cars, and then they got bored with it. Terror attack on the other hand tend to scare the living shit and every remaining ounce of rational thought out of people. People worldwide supported two wars over 9/11.
It may be total, but there aren't enough resources to process absolutely everything. I'll grant you ISIS, but random shooters? That's hardly a national security threat. When you're running a secret surveillance program you probably don't want to go and tell police about every planned murder you discovered, because at some point people will start asking questions about how you know the things you do (or some Joe Random Officer will decide to disclose your program for a 5 minutes of fame in a late night show interview).
I guess it does work, but they prioritize the threats (possibly still missing some important ones).
Mass surveillance may simply be less useful. There are people that use the fact that 'it works' as an argument pro-surveillance. I don't agree with that argument but it gets used quite frequently. Now imagine how bad it would be if all this mass surveillance went on and it wasn't even effective. That's no way to get a bigger budget next year.
So Snowden and Campbell are likely correct and those that argue that 'it works' could very well be wrong at the same time.
1. The internet is not (in my guess) as ubiquitous in the Middle East as it is in more developed societies. If you want to monitor everyone in that environment, you're limited to Stasi style personal informants.
2. As information flows up to policy makers, it's transformed, shaded or obscured to fit the world views and agendas of the agencies and individuals "analyzing ans summarizing" it and passing it up.
Total Information Awareness is not for policy makers, it's for spies and law enforcement.
That may well reflect the false positive paradox. Let's say that the US has total surveillance. When they're interested in rare events, they'll be overwhelmed by false positives, unless the rate of false positives is very low. And so they need to check out all of the hits, and that takes time.
