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"were pre-emptively disrupted"

Says the FBI, with a conflict of interest large enought to drive a big truck full of fertilizer though in publishing these things. They also have a varified history of lying through their teeth.

So, you're simply unwilling to accept any evidence on the subject? Do you have any evidence at all to support your perspective?

Sorry, I believe the burden of proof is on you to show credible non-governement evidence that the FBI has stopped just some of the numerous terrorist you are referring.

Bring out FBI press-releases and the like and I'll just have to point you at the many FBI statements from the past that are now obviously blatent fabricated lies.

> many FBI statements from the past that are now obviously blatent fabricated lies.

You mean like the entire practice of forensic fiber analysis, which they were forced to cop to after the fact: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-testimo...

These are just isolated demands for rigor. I gave you a concrete list. You're welcome to dispute any of them on the actual facts. Until then, I think we're done here.

You gave me a press release from an organizaion that has a history of being deceptive. Why would I, or anybody, take it as a "concrete list?"

The thread of discussion here is that the FBI needs to have broad survaillance capabilities to catch crime before it occurs. The list you gave has verly little support for that in that almost all of the acts in the list were not stopped due to any survaillance, but rather invesigations after the fact. You could assert that they might have been stopped, but that is conjecture.

If you ctrl+f for the word 'plot', you'll find the ones that were disrupted prior to execution. They don't spell it out, for obvious reasons, but generally some sort of surveillance is involved.

> The question is whether or not the abuses that might occur as the result of analyzing publicly available information are worse than the harms that might come from not doing so.

How many criminals announce their plans on Twitter in a way that law enforcement can use to prevent a crime? From my perspective, it seems like the potential for crime prevention is small compared to the potential for abuse.

I think things are often planned on Twitter to some degree. A lot of the quasi-planned looting and rioting was mapped out on Twitter, for instance. It's a very rich source for information on these sorts of things.

And almost every single one of those they had evidence, indications of which particular individuals to monitor/infiltrate. Often this was through reliable sources.

And where did they get that evidence?

> I come down pretty squarely on the harms from not doing so being greater

And this feeling you have may stem from another political narrative being created and amplified: the fear of 'the other'. The fear that justifies all of this to so many people.

Sowing the FUD that e.g. most people from Mexico are "criminials, rapists, carrying disease", or that Moslims are terrorists. That terrorist sleeper cells may be everywhere. A gliding scale of xenophobia created for political purposes.

What a strange non-sequitur. You know that I am the one in this thread suggesting that the FBI should monitor right-wing white supremacist groups, right?

You are right. If I could still edit I'd replace 'you have' with 'in general' because that was what I was referring to. Didn't refer to you in particular.