1 Reason: http://willyloman.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/boston-9.jpg (NSFW)
Sometimes you need try and understand both points of view.
The fact that the Boston bombings still happened should be proof enough that these systems either A) Do not work or B) are not being used against this type of threat.
If it isn't in defense of incidents of domestic terror, what the fuck is it for?
Maybe. (This is normally "bear-repellent amulet" type thinking, but I think there's a specific exemption in this case, in that there are good reasons why you'd see no evidence of the system's effectiveness: the government doesn't like to get the public riled up by terrorist threats--terrorism is entirely about riling-up, after all--and so, when the terrorism is caught ahead of time, you'd imagine they'd sweep it under the rug. I might be wrong, though; this still might be a bad justification!)
I'm quite sure that's exactly what the government likes to do. That's the very reason that "terrorism" is in the headlines as much as it is: it serves the government by allowing them to extend their powers and budgets enormously. Feed scary stories about "terrorism" to an uncritical public and they'll beg you to take away their "freedom" in exchange for greater "security".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lDZjiPok3w
Yes, it's a pointed example ("TERRIFIC ACTS OF ATROCITY!!!!1111"), but if you're going to tell me that "terrorism is entirely about riling-up", and therefore politics and powermongering aren't, I think pretty much all of known, including recent, history utterly destroys that argument.
Because it was happening all the time before
Terrorism is a small subset of what the intelligence community supports. The majority of intelligence collection is used for strategic military planning and political decision making. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Comm...
More people have suffered in Gitmo than were injured in the Boston attack, and more people died from drone strikes than when the towers fell.
I always think about the movie "Carlitos Way" with Andy Garcia, where he plays a ruthless gangster but he develops a conscience. One day this kid crosses him but instead of killing the kid, he gives him a break, then at the end as he is giving this life up and going straight, running to catch his train, this kid pops up and kills him. The U.S. has been this ruthless gangster through the cold war, securing energy supplies, etc, now Obama comes in and thinks he is going to give the U.S. a conscience but unfortunately some guy lost his mother, wife and daughter during Iraq or in another instance and he doesn't care that you have a conscience now. The bottom line is that the U.S. has to watch it's back for a long time because they made a lot of enemies on the road to become the "mob boss", super power of the world.
The nobility of man is partially predicated on our ability to carry on and build and dream without giving into fear, rational or otherwise.
The only way out of this mess is to accept that sometimes losses will exist and to be able to overcome them when they happen--even if you've built in N layers of security some day somebody somewhere will cut through N+1 of them, and to pretend otherwise is folly.
It's time for us to grow some fucking backbone.
The only thing that has changed, is the bureaucracy acquired a massive amount of new money and power after 9/11 and they're unwilling to give any of it up. This despite the fact that the threat isn't even remotely as great as they've claimed for the past decade. The security theater production - eg most of what the TSA does at airports, in which they just pretend to work security - is meant to keep Americans living in constant fear.
The US Government's fear business has been booming, worth a couple hundred billion a year these days.
It is possible that he wasn't lying about certain other issues, and concede that he has long been reasonably concerned with poverty in the U.S., but it's clear that the whole "civil liberties crusader" persona he adopted as a senator was nothing more than a facade -- this despite the fact the he taught constitutional law!. It's become apparent (to me, at least) that to Obama, liberty comes in a very distant third after security and prosperity. That's a legitimate position to hold, but the lies he told about this issue to get elected make him just another lying pol.
I do admit the possibility, namely that Obama did hold these civil libertarian beliefs prior to being elected, but gave them up as a practical measure once he learned of the threats we are confronted with. To me, that approach is even more contemptible (you know the Franklin quote "those who would give up liberty..."), so I prefer to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume he was simply misleading us with quotes like these:
“This (Bush) administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. There are no short-cuts to protecting America.” --Barack Obama (Aug. 1, 2007)
You couldn't be bothered to vote for a third party?
Now you're telling me that will all these apparatus they missed Beavis & Butthead there? (yes, that's what they were) And they had several warnings that went ignored and didn't depend on surveillance.
Looks like extreme incompetency or that they weren't looking for that in the first place.