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Comment by Imnimo | Hacker News Reader

While I'm absolutely opposed to PRISM and similar programs, I think it's a little disingenuous to suggest that the only potential value was from stopping terrorist attacks. Look at this leaked powerpoint slide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism-week-in-life-straig...

If you want to argue against PRISM-like programs, it would behoove you to tackle their actual purpose. We shouldn't just argue that PRISM isn't good at catching terrorists, we should argue that the total value of intelligence gained from it is not worth sacrificing our privacy for.

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That's a good point. While we don't know the details, it's entirely possible that it didn't stop any terrorist attacks because the intel gathered allowed the USA to remove the conditions that would have allowed an attack to be planned in the first place. Ideally, that's how it would happen, just like it's better for an organizations IT department to proactively prevent networking problems than trying to mitigate issues that have already surfaced.

I think the larger point is that the goal of vast majority of intelligence gathering programs - and judging by the slides this seems to include PRISM as well - has nothing to do with stopping terrorist attacks, which is a tiny subset of what intelligence agencies do. Judging their utility by counting the number of terrorist attacks they've prevented is mostly a meaningless exercise.

These are similar kinds of non-falsifiable claims that many authoritarian or the like use.

* The stock is down 25% this year with our $100M/yr CEO, but think of how bad it would have been without them

* We need tough on crime policies because unreported crimes are on the rise

* Tough on crime policies deterred all the decline in crimerate

* The king is good because we didnt get invaded since he sat on the throne

But this is also a non-falsifiable claim that conspiracy theorists use.

The big difference, I think, is that dx87's post encourages the reader to make fewer assumptions and to keep an open mind ("While we don't know the details, it's entirely possible..."), while your bullet points are statements that encourage the reader to make more assumptions.

There's no need to qualify that with "many authoritarian or the like use". There's no way to know whether or not PRISM has had any impact. Even if the program were to stop today, if everything remained the same, you could still argue that the effects of the program were so great that they've essentially collapsed the US-targeted terrorist attack industry, possibly forever.

The only real discussion that can take place is whether or not the potential safety afforded by the surveillance is worth the real erosion of freedoms. Those in favor of the surveillance are winning that discussion where it matters, whether its through emotional appeal, fearmongering, corruption or whatever. Its a totally opinionated case at this point, which even the ballot box wouldn't help as you'd just be shifting the onus of persuasion from the military leaders to the American people, who definitely don't know enough of what's happening overseas to make a reasonably informed decision.

Its the most complex issue voters would be straddled with, everything pales in comparison.

> Its the most complex issue voters would be straddled with

Which is unfortunate because the point of representation is to remove much of that onus from voters. If your representation just becomes a selfish risk factor, may as well do direct democracy.

It's too bad there isn't something like what lawyers, doctors, or fiduciaries must adhere to but for politicians.

that argument assumes that those other things have high value for the cost and that they couldn’t have been gained in any less privacy-invading way. those are high hurdles requiring only light proof to easily cast doubt on any invasive counterterrorism program.

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