I am sure the news would love to run information about the prosecution of foiled terrorists.
Could it perhaps be that terrorism is a vastly overhyped threat, and that effectively zero people are undertaking it?
The point is that a foiled plot doesn't get reported on when it's discovered only when the offender goes to trial.
There is no public record of each arrest by the police, as an example which might help understand this.
Furthermore there will be plots that are foiled, people arrested but prosecutions dropped due to lack of evidence or something and, again, the press offices in the police or government are not mandated to distribute that news.
That’s not to say the guys who agreed to said plots were blameless. That’s to say that I’ve seen zero evidence that the FBI has brought any actual, independently motivated terrorists to justice by foiling their plots.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_New_York_City_Subway_and_...
To be clear, “patsy” is too harsh a term for what I meant. There is value in diverting the attention of people intending to do harm from real plots to fake ones invented by the FBI. However, that is not “thwarting an attack”, and in my opinion does not justify excessive surveillance.