> Secondly, I'm not convinced that mass surveillance is entirely ineffective. Wholly I agree that it's illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, overwrought, wicked expensive, and overreaching. But in our reform efforts, I want an account of how our intelligence services performed. I simply cannot believe that there haven't been many more attempted terrorist attacks.
When the US government takes away its citizens' rights (of which privacy is one), the onus is on the government to justify this action. We cannot just assume surveillance works, the government has to prove it--show us the examples. Luckily we know just how effective these programs are and, as the authors here correctly point out, the answer is "not much." [1]
From the link in the article, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded in 2014,
> Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack. [1]
[1] https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/e...
EDIT: As to the question of 'what's at stake with privacy rights?', there are great films [2], talks [3], and reading [4] on what's at stake with privacy.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others
[3] https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matter...
[4] https://bookshop.org/books/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalis...
When the US government takes away its citizens' rights (of which privacy is one), the onus is on the government to justify this action. We cannot just assume surveillance works, the government has to prove it--show us the examples. Luckily we know just how effective these programs are and, as the authors here correctly point out, the answer is "not much." [1]
From the link in the article, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded in 2014,
> Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack. [1]
[1] https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/e...
EDIT: As to the question of 'what's at stake with privacy rights?', there are great films [2], talks [3], and reading [4] on what's at stake with privacy.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others
[3] https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matter...
[4] https://bookshop.org/books/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalis...