This is the side-effect of reaching the goal of 'collect-it-all', the next logical step would be to evolve beyond targeted surveillance, or even honey-pots, and start doing large-scale behavioral analysis of raw traffic patterns, and use those as probable-cause indicators for further surveillance.
This is the ultimate promised-land of the surveillance state.
If that were to prove difficult, slip a USB drive into someone's bag and tip off the authorities.
One way to prove that it isn't working is if there are still terrorist attacks or high crime rates despite all the spying, but then they'll just want to use the empirical evidence that their spying is ineffective as an excuse to do more spying or some other stupid/invasive/expensive thing. Meanwhile if (as seems to be the trend) crime and terrorism remain at low levels, that proves nothing either way because it could just as easily be a result of something like the elimination of leaded gasoline[1] in most countries outside of the middle east.
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
A possible solution is to require ultimate disclosure of all criminal investigations. Whenever an investigation is closed or effectively abandoned by having less than e.g. 40 hours dedicated to it in a month, require the target to be notified and provided with all of the evidence and notes the same as they would have gotten in discovery if the case had gone to trial. That way people find out about the failures and can see when their tax dollars are going to investigate innocent people.
It's sort of hard to reason about this. War has changed significantly in the sense that were there to be an absolute war between Great Powers the collateral damage would be wholely absolute. That doesn't mean the Great Powers haven't come close to all out armed conflict, or even that they aren't currently engaged in proxy measures to increase their spheres of influence.
Take the current crisis in Ukraine. American citizens seem surprised that events are currently unfolding there, as though all of a sudden Russia decided to be a bully, and as if the events in Ukraine unfolded due to activity local to the region. This ignores the context - that NATO and the EU, under the leadership of Germany (who was hacked recently - again - by Russia) with the support of the US has for the past decade pushed hard to absorb former Warsaw Pact nations. It ignores that both Georgia and Moldova before Ukraine were geographically split into breakaway regions and saw West- and Russian- backed separatists, cluster munitions and the rest. It ignores that the West was involved in the funding and training of Euromaiden groups and the Orange Revolution, that Voice of America pushed for political changes in these Baltic states that led to their distancing with Russia. It ignores the conflict between the United States plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile shields in zones technically illegal according to Cold War deals and Russia's responses. It ignores the Russian push to expand influence in parts of Europe and its support of Eurosceptic parties. It ignores the contended areas around the world that both Russia and NATO lay claim to (including areas in the North Arctic, which are important strategic military points). It ignores the stop of disarmament, and in fact rearmament and reassessment of nuclear capability, of nuclear countries (primarily Russia and the United States). It ignores the forming of an alternate world bank between China, Russia, India, and Brazil. It ignores the that the conflict in Syria is both historically grounded as an area of Cold Proxy War and Russia's support for the Syrian Assad regime today. It ignores Russia's ambitions to build stronger ties with the Latin Americas. It ignores the development of hypersonic missile delivery systems by the nuclear proliferated nations (to which there is no known defensive answer, well besides, to small degrees formerly mentioned 'anti-ballistic shields'... say located in the Czech Republic or Poland...), and the sharing of this technology between allies.
This is a long, roundabout way of saying that there is absolutely conflict that errs on the side of violent conflict today and that in fact the areas of most activity - Ukraine and other Baltic states, Syria, Venezuela - and where tensions are building like North Korea and parts of Europe are areas that are inherently and intrinsically linked to Cold War spheres of influence and the interests of Great Powers today.
The nature of war has changed. It has had to. But nations are still at war. If you don't want to call it that, we don't have to call it that. We can call it state violence or something.
The second point to be made here is that most of the capabilities of the intelligence agencies are geopolitical capabilities whose targets are states rather than violent individuals. From the targeting of nationals' cell phones and email records, the hacking of national oil companies and infrastructure, the sabotage of nuclear operations in Iraq and now South Korea, the exfiltration of defense data from the United States and from Israel, the hacking and grounding of the Syrian air force, the cyber attack on Georgia during military intervention - these capabilities are cybermilitary first and cyberpolice second.
Intelligence agencies are tasked with questions like "If Russia invades the rest of Ukraine, how will Germany react?" That can be answered with data from tapping the leadership's phones, or by how often the words "putin" and "despot" appear together in emails from German citizens.
Will the current German government fall if they do not react? How about if Russia moves the day after an important German election? How much does Russia know about German public opinion? Is there a greater chance that they will invade after/during/before the election?
Replace "German election" with "the Winter Olympics" and you have a very realworld question.
I don't think that's how government works. If it turns out that such prediction is not possible, then they'll receive more funding to do more surveillance and manipulation, and continue the cycle "until it works."
I don't agree with that assessment, on many levels - finance, state actors in territorial/resource disputes, national & ethnic issues. Its an 'uneasy peace' for many nations.
A time of relative domestic peace (for us) and the sublimation of conflict into market competition, can lead us to overlook the facts.
Through history war and conflict seem like a natural condition/disposition. This time is no different to any other.