Pretending That The New Police State Rules Are Working
Contrary to the claim that PRISM stopped a terrorist plot on the NYC subways, it actually seems to have been "old-fashioned police work," as Ben Smith notes at Buzzfeed:

Defenders of the American government's online spying program known as "PRISM" claimed Friday that the suddenly controversial secret effort had saved New York City's subways from a 2009 terrorist plot led by a young Afghan-American, Najibullah Zazi.

But British and American legal documents from 2010 and 2011 contradict that claim, which appears to be the latest in a long line of attempts to defend secret programs by making, at best, misleading claims that they were central to stopping terror plots. While the court documents don't exclude the possibility that PRISM was somehow employed in the Zazi case, the documents show that old-fashioned police work, not data mining, was the tool that led counterterrorism agents to arrest Zazi.

“I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 per cent security and also then have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience,” the president told the crowd while delivering several minutes of unscripted remarks about the NSA.

That's a false premise. There is no such thing as 100% security. If there was 100% security the Boston bombing and the attempt on Times Square wouldn't have happened.

Most Americans value their privacy and the TSA inconvenience doesn't make a difference against terrorists.

Jim P. at June 8, 2013 7:00 AM

So can you have 0 per cent security, 0 per cent privacy and 100 per cent inconvenience?

Martin at June 8, 2013 9:15 AM

Amy Alkon

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/06/08/pretending_that.html#comment-3739267">comment from Martin

Well-said, Martin. That's pretty much it, in a line.

Amy Alkon at June 8, 2013 9:39 AM

Let's not forget the brutal treatment of whistleblowers under Obama, particularly Pvt. Manning in the WikiLeaks case.

Daniel Ellsberg, who blew the doors off the Vietnam atrocity by using the government's own words against it in the Pentagon Papers case, is damned sure that Obama would have put him away for life for revealing the truth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/05/daniel-ellsberg-im-sure-that-president-obama-would-have-sought-a-life-sentence-in-my-case/

Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 8, 2013 9:42 AM

Leave a comment

Name

Email Address

URL

Remember personal info?

Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)

People drive to work in cars or pirates? (required):