"How could they not know?" [regarding US intelligence gathering on the Boston and Fort Hood terrorists]
pfflier & Boogieman replied, including these quotes at #14 and #30:
Billions of messages in internet traffic how would you find the ones that are relevant?and
No matter how good their software is, it still can only catch a tiny percent of the types of communications that they are looking for.
I don't know what news forums you are reading, but I have read several articles posted here about the specific terrorism related information that was gathered about the Boston and Fort Hood terrorists before their terrorism.
Thank you. I think underestimating the power of the government has been our undoing. And lots of people still underestimate it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwaAVJITx1Y
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've gotta have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."
[Obama - July 2, 2008 - Colorado Springs, CO]
and also at 16:42 in this longer clip. . .
“I don’t know what news forums you are reading, but I have read several articles posted here about the specific terrorism related information that was gathered about the Boston and Fort Hood terrorists before their terrorism.”
Yes, in those cases, I think they had enough info to look a lot closer at those guys and they dropped the ball for some reason. But those weren’t the only events the poster was talking about, and it seemed like they were under the impression that the NSA spying program was a magic ball that should have caught every terrorist from 9/11 on up. We’re not living in “Minority Report” yet, so that’s just a silly idea to have.
The only ways to detect that using electronic surveillance would be incredible luck on the part of the analysts or incredible stupidity on the part of the terrorists. And that assumes there are emissions to analyze.
The only plausible way to detect something like that would be HUMINT that would point to an electronic source that could be monitored and analyzed..