Aren't they going to be catching only the lowest of the low-hanging fruit using a technique like this, or am I giving terrorists too much credit? Wouldn't the ones engaging in actual criminal actions be using encrypted services, encrypted files, VPNs, etc. and not just randomly uploading things in the open from their devices to mainstream websites?
... which is an interesting theory given the fact that the linked slides show them looking through information gathered from videos on bomb-making and abductions.
It's important to note that the kind of 'terrorism' being fought here is in fact a war and thus geopolitical.
First, jihad means holy war.
Second, we are in a 'war on terror', where we have deployed our militaries to neutralize and kill tens of thousands of people. If you think these people were terrorists that had not yet ever attacked anyone - "preterrorists" - then you suggest that the United States and allies have the right to be judge, jurer and executioner on people's intentions, and have the right to indiscriminately kill. But if you say they are soldiers, or factional forces, then the ethics and norms of war applies and it becomes acceptable for us to kill these people in mass, whether they have ever killed someone before or not.
Third, the uniting of forces in the Middle East against Israel and the mandates of the West (who in there eyes differ only in label and not in function from colonialists) have close to a century old history now of being an area of proxy war between other nations. During and after the first world war as punishment and destruction of the Ottoman empire and in the establishment of British control and extraction of resources from the region, and in the development of an Israel, and via the Sykes-Picot agreement the redrawing of boundaries to keep the area unstable and divided. During and after the Second World War as a proxy area of influence of the League of Nations and the USSR. During the Cold War between the USSR and NATO and today between Russia's Syria, a historically divided Egypt, and NATO's Israel.
The 'terrorist' label being targeted is in fact a type of guerrilla fighter, a soldier that is potentially recruitable to a United Arabia that has historically hated its occupation by the West. A soldier who is more likely to attack somewhere at home than even attempt to leave and do violence in a Western country. We do not drone strike any old guerrilla fighter, however. We drone strike the ones whose politics and infighting, at the current instance, are counter to the hopes and dreams of US foreign policy. Those Arabs who learn how to make homemade bombs that are against the Assad regime, for example, are absolutely allowed, even encouraged, to live.
I had to do some major plumbing repair recently. I watched a lot of plumbing videos on Youtube to make sure I was doing everything correctly, because I had never done any plumbing work before and was worried I might screw something up. If I wanted to construct an IED, I'd probably watch a lot of videos to make sure I was doing everything correctly, because I've never constructed a remotely detonated explosive device capable of destroying a large vehicle and I'd worry that I might screw something up.
That's quite the strawman argument you've shot back. It goes along nicely with the shifting goalposts - if you recall, the original argument I was replying to simply stated that these programs had nothing to do with terrorism.
My point in my previous comment was that most of the people watching videos on bomb-making are probably interested in building bombs. If you're trying to find people who want to blow stuff up, that's probably not a bad place to start looking. Nowhere in there did I say the government should be blowing up everyone who looks at the wrong Youtube video.
Yes, it's a shame that the US constitution doesn't prevent a Canadian intelligence agency from spying on kidnappers in Germany and Algeria who are uploading videos of their hostages, along with Kenyans downloading bomb-making videos from companies in Hong Kong (Megaupload), Switzerland (Rapidshare) and wherever sendspace.com is located (their terms of use just says 'not in the US').
> How would you know what the program's being used to look for?
Because I read the article and the accompanying Powerpoint slide deck, and those were the only concrete examples in it. You can't really make many hard conclusions beyond what was shown, and the examples that they did show weren't very infuriating...
Thanks for sharing that information created and disseminated by the NSA itself[0][1][2]. Wasn't the original party line "over fifty"? No reason to think they would ever lie[3][4].
Elected US officials don't have access to enough information to verify those claims, guessing you don't either.
The link was from the House Intelligence Committee, not the NSA. I'm sure they're basing a lot of that on information they got from the NSA, since these are, after all, NSA programs, but those four examples came from an entirely separate branch of the government.
I'm curious if you bothered reading the three articles you cited, because the Washington Post article doesn't address those four cases at all, and the other two in that group you cited are, in fact, the exact same article published in two separate outlets. The arguments that the authors pose against three of the four cases is basically that it was possible to acquire the intelligence differently, not that the programs failed. The argument against the 4th case makes the argument that because Khalid Ouazzani was indicted for separate charges, the programs must not have worked. This article[1] gives more detail on the case, and explains why he wasn't indicted.
The original "party line" was the following (from [2]):
Gen. Keith Alexander said these programs enabled the United States to disrupt 54 "events," 42 of which "involved disrupted plots."
Of those 54:
12 involved cases of material support to terrorists;
50 lead to arrests or detentions;
25 occurred in Europe;
11 were in Asia;
5 were in Africa;
13 had a homeland nexus.
Forty-one of the terrorist activities did not involve events in the United States, Alexander said. Alexander went on to say that in 53 of the 54 cases, data collected under Section 702 provided the initial tip to "unravel the threat stream." He said that almost half of terrorist reporting comes from Section 702, ...
When Sen Leahy questioned Gen Alexander on this, it was more of an indictment that the media was getting it wrong and inflating the count by including the 12 material support cases, and clarifying how many cases were the result of the bulk cell phone records program (one or two) versus PRISM (everything else).
> Elected US officials don't have access to enough information to verify those claims, guessing you don't either.
I'm guessing you've never sat in on a classified congressional intelligence committee briefing, and wouldn't have the information to back up your statement.
> I'm sure they're basing a lot of that on information they got from the NSA
Cite the exact sources the House Intelligence Committee's report was based on. If it's coming directly from the NSA what makes you think it's trustworthy? They've lied under oath.
Your conclusions are debatable.
> I'm curious if you bothered reading the three articles you cited, because the Washington Post article
Curious about your reading ability as well. The article is from the Washington Times, not the Washington Post. The very first paragraph states:
The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records.
They seem to be talking about the exact same numbers you're citing as unassailable truth. Hopefully that satisfies your curiosity.
> I'm guessing you've never sat in on a classified congressional intelligence committee briefing, and wouldn't have the information to back up your statement.
Sorry this doesn't make sense. Not sure how to respond.
> If it's coming directly from the NSA what makes you think it's trustworthy? They've lied under oath.
I love this assertion - it gets tossed around so much when someone just wants to shut an argument down. Because James Clapper (who is not part of the NSA) gave a statement on the NSA to Congress which turned out to be false, every subsequent piece of information on the NSA from a government official that disagrees with your opinion must therefore be a lie - no evidence necessary. Who needs to examine official testimony when we can just say the opposing argument is all lies and call it a day?
> Curious about your reading ability as well.
Classy.
> They seem to be talking about the exact same numbers you're citing as unassailable truth.
You're the one that introduced the numbers with your "party line" comment, not me. My point was that your cited article claims to show Gen Alexander caught in a lie over the '54' number, admitting finally that it was only one or two, when that was never his claim to begin with. For that matter, Sen Leahy isn't questioning the number, either - he released a rather long statement on the matter[1] in which he stated that his issue was that the number of successes for the Section 215 (bulk cell records) and the Section 702 (PRISM) programs were being lumped together. Gen Alexander gave public testimony in June stating that 53 of those 54 successes were from PRISM, but that fact wasn't being adequately conveyed to the public. You'll note that Sen Leahy states in that document that he did, in fact, have access to the complete classified list.
> Sorry this doesn't make sense.
Allow me to break it down for you: you have never been to any of the classified briefings given to either of the two congressional intelligence committees, so you don't know what was briefed to them. You have no idea how much access the congress has been given to classified information. When you say "Elected US officials don't have access to enough information to verify those claims," you have no way to back that statement up.
That's the nature of classified information - the government gets to keep secrets, too. That's why we have intelligence committees to oversee agencies like the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. If you don't like it, just be honest and make an argument against state secrecy or degrees of transparency instead of making up credibility claims that you can't back up.
