<story><title>Live: Head of NSA meets with House Intelligence Committee</title><url>http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220343</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marknutter</author><text>Arguing that these programs are effective by revealing a few foiled terrorist plots is entirely beside the point. Obviously monitoring every communication on the planet would help the government track down a few terrorist plots here and there. If they really want the debate to focus on the effectiveness of these programs then they should explain why they failed so spectacularly to prevent the Boston Marathon bombings, a plot carried out by two of the most careless and naive terrorists to date. Heck, even a direct warning from Russian officials fell on deaf ears. Perhaps the NSA was too busy listening to innocent people&amp;#x27;s phone calls to respond?&lt;p&gt;The effectiveness isn&amp;#x27;t what&amp;#x27;s at issue here, though. The problem is the loss of privacy for innocent civilians, to which Obama and other government officials respond to with wishy-washy arguments about &amp;quot;tradeoffs&amp;quot; between security and privacy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GVIrish</author><text>I would argue that even if these programs were effective in foiling some terrorist plots, that it&amp;#x27;s still not worth it.  I mean, we could probably could prevent some mass shootings if we put everyone with a history of serious mental illness in an institution for the rest of their lives but that wouldn&amp;#x27;t make it right.&lt;p&gt;And perhaps the bigger risk to using the &amp;#x27;it prevented terorrist plots&amp;#x27; argument is that it creates a convenient excuse for more surveillance and curtailing of rights.  All that needs to happen is for a few more terorrist plots to slip through, then the argument will be, &amp;#x27;We need MORE power to stop these people&amp;#x27; or, &amp;#x27;If you just allowed us to do this, this, and this, we could&amp;#x27;ve prevented that&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Then long after a significant threat of Jihadist terrorist attack is gone, we&amp;#x27;ll still be dealing with a uber-powerful police state.</text></comment>
<story><title>Live: Head of NSA meets with House Intelligence Committee</title><url>http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220343</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marknutter</author><text>Arguing that these programs are effective by revealing a few foiled terrorist plots is entirely beside the point. Obviously monitoring every communication on the planet would help the government track down a few terrorist plots here and there. If they really want the debate to focus on the effectiveness of these programs then they should explain why they failed so spectacularly to prevent the Boston Marathon bombings, a plot carried out by two of the most careless and naive terrorists to date. Heck, even a direct warning from Russian officials fell on deaf ears. Perhaps the NSA was too busy listening to innocent people&amp;#x27;s phone calls to respond?&lt;p&gt;The effectiveness isn&amp;#x27;t what&amp;#x27;s at issue here, though. The problem is the loss of privacy for innocent civilians, to which Obama and other government officials respond to with wishy-washy arguments about &amp;quot;tradeoffs&amp;quot; between security and privacy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vermontdevil</author><text>I would also add to the argument that the following things are also happening and will happen:&lt;p&gt;1) More money being wasted to support certain corporations (Booz etc) in return for future plum jobs by these representatives&amp;#x2F;senators or heads of these agencies. Thus the cycle continues in favor of supporting these programs rather than analyzing whether we really need it or not.&lt;p&gt;2) Abuses by contractors or employees when they have this much access and power in seeing all the private data&lt;p&gt;3) Corruption of these committees due to the feeling of being &amp;quot;in&amp;quot; where others are not.&lt;p&gt;In other words, it&amp;#x27;s going to get worse.</text></comment>