“Dzokhar tsarneav would have been caught before the marathon bombing if the program worked AND they were busy actually looking at people likely to be a threat.”
So, your theory is:
- NSA is conducting spying operations within the US (contrary to US law, BTW).
- If NSA was really looking for terrorists they would have stopped Tsarneav.
- NSA did not catch Tsarneav because they are under orders not to spy on muslims.
- The majority of terrorists are muslims.
Therefore, spying on terrorists is a cover for spying operations on US citizens.
Does that pretty much sum it up?
Are you seriously that stupid?
The NSA is currently spying on the citizenry, that has been reported and proven, repeatedly.
The cellphone monitoring program, if it worked, would have caught Dzokhar Tsarneav and his brother because they used exclusively cellphones and facebook for communication, planning, and bragging.
And TO DATE the NSA program has done NOTHING to catch anyone.
And you sure dance a fine jig, but you still are defending domestic spying.
And let’s not forget that the FBI has a program that was called Magic Lantern that was revealed back in 2001.
http://www.cnet.com/news/feds-use-keylogger-to-thwart-pgp-hushmail/
It was developed during the Clinton years, during the same crap as Carnivore and Echelon.
You remember THOSE, don’t you?
“NSA is conducting spying operations within the US (contrary to US law, BTW).”
NSA is mining traffic “bounced” through overseas network nodes so the data becomes “international” rather than “domestic” and is now legally subject to monitoring.
“If NSA was really looking for terrorists they would have stopped Tsarneav.”
NSA claims to be really looking for terrorists, but that doesn’t actually even matter, because their monitoring program captures such a monumental amount of data that there is no possible way to sift through it all quickly enough to flag traffic like that; not even using computers.
“NSA did not catch Tsarneav because they are under orders not to spy on muslims.”
No. NSA didn’t catch Tsarnaev because their monitoring system is utterly untenable; like trying to drink from a fire hose (more like Niagara Falls, actually). NSA cannot manage the volume of data they’re getting; they don’t even know, in real time, whether any of that data is from Muslims, or not; they’re just scooping up everything with the largest net possible. They’re not specifically watching anyone; they’re unspecifically — and highly objectionably — watching everyone, which means they’re astronomically unlikely to notice anything important in time to do anything about it unless by complete accident, and that equates to the whole program being a dismal failure unworthy of continuing either funding or staffing.
The program is indefensible and has to stop.
Your point is moot when they ARE using the "tools" against citizens.
Secretive court rules NSA can keep collecting phone records - January 3, 2014, 11:12 PM
A secretive U.S. spy court has ruled again that the National Security Agency can keep collecting every American's telephone records every day, in the midst of dueling decisions in two other federal courts about whether the surveillance program is constitutional.
