Surveillance vs Terrorism

The cluster debates the effectiveness of mass government surveillance (e.g., NSA programs) in preventing terrorist attacks, questioning why known terrorists evade detection despite extensive data collection and highlighting privacy trade-offs.

➡️ Stable 0.5x Politics & Society
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Comments
20
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5
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#6531
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Keywords

US theintercept.com FBI theguardian.com ALL NSA RSA SMS terrorist terrorists terrorism attacks boston marathon nsa caught attackers national security

Sample Comments

diydsp Dec 16, 2013 View on HN

but but they have all our cell phone and internet records. How can terrorism still happen?

rumpelstinkin Oct 21, 2022 View on HN

it can't be that easy, there's plenty of groups that would routinely use something like that for terrorism etc. It hasn't happened yet, so it must be more difficult than it looks?

ccvannorman Apr 6, 2015 View on HN

Surely it's worth a few citizen's dick picks being seen to stop terrorism, right?

perfunctory Jan 30, 2012 View on HN

For what? So that they can spot real terrorists who post their plans on-line?

baddox Aug 18, 2020 View on HN

How can you “catch a terrorist” without proving that they have done something wrong?

Fuzzwah Aug 9, 2013 View on HN

But then the terrorists would know too!

chriswarbo Jan 23, 2015 View on HN

I agree about the already-known argument. The Charlie Hebdo murderers, the Boston marathon murderer, Lee Rigby's murderer, they've all been known to the police and/or intelligence services.In which case, a pertinent question to ask is if the aim is to stop such attacks, is it appropriate to spend this much time and effort building a bigger haystack on top of the needles they already have?

jokoon Oct 8, 2014 View on HN

shouldn't it be classified because it would warn the terrorists their plan is revealed ?

WhereIsTheTruth Jun 22, 2023 View on HN

People who track and profile me online are potential terrorists

chokeartist Jan 28, 2021 View on HN

You're overthinking terrorism investigations. They don't need to be able to defeat crypto. They just need to be able to threaten Muhammad or whomever with 20 years in the clink. Everyone rolls under that pressure. No one is "hard".