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If it's so easy to accomplish, why doesn't it happen more?

Maybe because outside of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor novels, and Hollywood summer blockbusters, there aren't actually that many people who: A. are motivated to conduct a terrorist attack, and B. equipped / able / willing to do so.

It seems that no one who brings this argument up acknowledges the possibility that terrorism doesn't seem like a big threat precisely because of the extreme precautions taken to stop it.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's not falsifiable. I mean, here ya go: I have a Tiger Proof Rock I'll see you. It absolutely protects against tiger attacks. How do I know it works? Well, in 39 years, I have never once been attacked by a tiger.

Anyway, this whole line of discussion shows exactly why we need more transparency and less secrecy from our government. We don't know if what they're doing works or not, because we largely don't know what they're doing. And this is not how a free, open and democratic society is supposed to work. We should not be a nation of secret laws, secret court systems, and shadowy government agencies operating in the dark.

Throw away the rock for a few years and see what happens. That's the test.

> Maybe because outside...

I explicitly acknowledged this in the very next sentence. The difference is that you assert this as a fact (for which you have no evidence) and I state it as a possible explanation.

> The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's not falsifiable.

And for the same reason the claim that terrorism is not a problem due to lack of sufficiently motivated terrorists is also not falsifiable. Hence my suggestion that the government scale back their anti-terrorism [spying] operations and see what the outcome is.

> we need more transparency and less secrecy from our government

Agreed.

I explicitly acknowledged this in the very next sentence. The difference is that you assert this as a fact (for which you have no evidence) and I state it as a possible explanation.

I actually meant to end that with a question mark, but I mistyped it and didn't notice until I saw your reply. I definitely don't mean to assert that as fact, but just floating it out there as a scenario worth considering.

And in fact, a few people have mentioned that the intelligence agencies had a bit of forewarning about Major Hasan (at Ft. Hood) and Tamerlan Tsarnaev and somehow still missed the key point: The fact that the intelligence agencies were able to know anything at all means that what they're doing is working. In fact the only thing that had kept those agencies from taking early action was our civil liberties and the need to employ due process, and the fact that there are still too many false positives.

Can a system like PRISM reduce the false positive rate? (Probably not, for domestic terrorists-to-be). If so, is it worth it? The answer might be "No", but it might be "Yes", too.

Another point to consider: If the intelligence agencies were able to get intel on the worst case scenarios (essentially "lone worf" budding terrorists) then how effective have they been in situations that play more to their strengths (which is to say, identifying and disrupting "cells" before they can proceed with an attack).

Sen. Udall has said that PRISM is completely redundant in stopping these attacks, but that doesn't mesh well with PRISM's prominent usage in the President's Daily Briefings. If PRISM isn't actually redundant, how useful does it have to be before we think it would be worth using?

And intelligence knew about the 9/11 bombers before 9/11, and failed to stop them.

If we already have enough data to predict criminal acts, and we are still failing, how is collecting more data the solution?

[Note, Fiction:] My smoke detector did a create job ringing when my house caught fire, but the fire department trucks didn't get to my house in time to save it. Why should I buy more smoke detectors?

I think your fictional example perfectly captures how flawed your argument is.

Do you mind expanding on your comment? I don't see the flaw in gohrt's argument.

To avoid getting into a debate about smoke detectors and fire departments, can you clarify the flaw in the actual argument he raised:

> If we already have enough data to predict criminal acts, and we are still failing, how is collecting more data the solution?

Imagine a smoke detector that could note the presence of conditions known to lead the fire and pre-alert the fire department to be ready to respond quickly...

And if the firetrucks still didn't make it in time or ignored the warning signs because the fancy smoke detector gave off lots of false warnings....

I still don't see a flaw with the underlying argument.

You're using the lack of an attack as proof that the system works, but it's proof of nothing. If I start using a special scented soap while travelling in India, can I come back and state that the use of the soap prevents tiger attacks because I was attacked 0 times while I was there? What about a shark repellent spray? I've been to the ocean many times and never been attacked by a shark because of my special spray!

  | it's very easy to create a lot of destruction and
  | disruption and fear with very mundane items

  | If it's so easy to accomplish, why doesn't it happen more?
  | Either terrorism is genuinely not a serious threat or our
  | security organizations are very good at what they do using
  | the tools they have at their disposal.

Prior to the powers given to the executive branch post-9/11, anyone could have executed the Boston Marathon Bombing, but it didn't happen. Timothy McVeigh could have launched his attack in the 1960's (provided he was alive then), but no one made such an attack. We didn't have:

  | Bombs going off every week in a major shopping mall or
  | in an airliner or in a bus

either.

  | I would be in favor of our security apparatuses 'taking a break'
  | or scaling back spying operations

You're treating this as a all-or-nothing approach. Either we have all-knowing spy agencies that can spy on anyone anywhere without any oversight, or we have spy agencies that are effectively shuttered.

Why can't the middle ground just be that we have spy agencies that obey the law, and the limitations as defined by the Constitution of the United States?

I don't think anybody is suggesting curtailing all intelligence gathering, but even if they just cut the program back to deal with extranational phone calls, you're now spying far less on your own citizens, and are indeed spying in a way less likely to generate as many false positives and that are more easy to justify an express reason for.

I'm not suggesting that's a valid fix, because I still wouldn't find that acceptable, but definitely it is preferable to what we have now.

We expend enormous resources preventing traffic deaths. From driver education to advanced safety systems costing thousands of dollars (in every vehicle sold!). There are (approx.) 15 million cars sold in the U.S. each year. Each $1000 of safety equipment is $15 billion spent mitigating traffic injuries and reducing deaths.

Maybe $15 billion looks silly in comparison to hundreds of billions, but it at least starts to look pretty comparable.

We also require everyone who will drive to obtain government papers for both the people (license) and vehicles (registration).

If you are going to include the safety equipment people willingly pay for in their cars, you need to include the billions of dollars people spend on guns to protect themselves as well.

I think the second paragraph of my comment makes it clear enough that I wasn't trying to make a complete comparison. The goal was more to establish that just dismissing spending on things like traffic safety is a bad argument.

But it still isn't a bad argument. First of all, the spending is off by an order of magnitude, and secondly, the amount of money spent per death is many orders of magnitude different. Spending 20x the money to save under 1/10 the lives?

  It seems that no one who brings this argument up 
  acknowledges the possibility that terrorism doesn't seem 
  like a big threat precisely because of the extreme 
  precautions taken to stop it.

Then on the one hand, the FBI and CIA would regularly, and very publicly, celebrate the apprehension, or otherwise prevention, of would-be terrorists, with some non-detailed description of the realistic terrorist attacks they were planning to undertake.

It would increase morale at those agencies, increase their standing with the public and discourage other would-be terrorists. Not much is given away if we are told the 4 people apprehended 'planned to plant a bomb at a plane in JFK airport by sneaking past security'.

Instead, we only get the occasional apprehension of delusional people with ludicrous plans.

On the other hand, if there really were many terrorists with actual plans, there would occasionally be a successful attack. Even at an unbelievable 99% prevention ratio, some would come through. An illegal immigrant loner building pipebombs in his cabin-in-the-woods could easily escape detection.

The much simpler explanation is that there simply aren't many terrorists with realistic terrorist plots. If anything, this surveillance should be defended by appeals to 'stopping the next mass shooting': that's an example of a crime that occasionally happens, while also many are prevented.