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Comment by tjaerv | Hacker News Reader

As of 2008: "For example, as of 2008, there were over 300 terrorists captured using intelligence generated from XKEYSCORE."

Anyone have an idea why they'd give a 5-year-old figure? One would hope that the figure as of 2013 should be more impressive?

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It's the same figure which was in the leaked documents from 2008 that points to some NSA/CSSM 1-52 document from 2007 as a basis. Perhaps they feel that this is the only justifiable piece of "statistics" they can provide at the moment. Though since the document was apparently OK to relay to foreign nations, this is likely another case of the "least untruthful" thing can say.

Reference 1st and 28th pages of: http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa...

"...captured using intelligence generated from..." is another of those trick phrases.

It doesn't clearly imply that without the program they wouldn't have captured those terrorists.

It doesn't clearly imply that any reduction in scope of xkeyscore would have let some of those 300 terrorists escape capture.

All it means for sure is that data from xkeyscore is part of the picture they looked at of those 300 terrorists leading up to their captures.

I wonder how many bona fide terrorists the government captured from 2001-2008.

oh god, how many billions did this program cost? I wonder what the dollar figure on cost per capture is, even assuming all 300 were legitimate. of course in reality they could just as easily have been thought crimes. no way to know.

> "...captured using intelligence generated from..." is another of those trick phrases. > It doesn't clearly imply that without the program they wouldn't have captured those terrorists.

Those are excellent points, and I wish they were raised more often. I'd like to add one more: How many of those captured were terrorists only thanks to your own government setting them up for the task first? In other words, how much of this was the result of "manufactured terrorism", ála FBI? (ref: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/terror-factory-f... and the earlier article linked from the story.)

After all, the actors in those programs still needed to communicate. Judging by the two articles the subjects weren't particularly bright either, so they probably would not have known how to protect their communications. Thus they were bound to generate material that would be scooped up the NSA programs. The fact that the plots were not only known in advance, but planned by your own government officials simply ensured that they would know with perfect accuracy where to look and what to look for.

A naked figure of "300 terrorists captured" is therefore meaningless, just like you said. Without a futher breakdown, the figure just feels like marketing.

As an odd side note - this makes manufactured terrorism look a bit like astroturfing. A scary thought.

I think that giving 2013 figure would imply they are still using it. They want to give as little information as possible

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