Snowdon is a dummy

I am not the Archie Bunker type...and I do not sound like I am.

all of this has prevented nothing.

Well, perhaps secret agencies (sic!) really should take over the all work usually done police forces: to prevent crime.

Knowing what everyone everywhere pretends to be doing sometime - that certainly will reduce the crime rate.
And I'm sure that there are some uninhabited islands where those people could be imprisoned, alternatively in some friendly states as done before by the CIA.

No they can't. That is the tesponsibility of the FBI, they have the law enforcement responsibility. NSA is responsible for foreign attacks.

I salivate thinking about all of the WallStreeters who would be in jail right now if these computers and listening devices had been pointed in their direction.

But there is proof it has worked out very well: Australia is a good example.

Knowing what everyone everywhere pretends to be doing sometime - that certainly will reduce the crime rate.
And I'm sure that there are some uninhabited islands where those people could be imprisoned, alternatively in some friendly states as done before by the CIA.

I don't Frank, of what use could the NSA have by putting spyware on people's mobile phone apps and the like? Can you just imagine how much man power it would take shifting through as much information as they apparently have to shift through? I don't see how they could really shift through it in time prevent too much unless they just happened to get lucky. I think it needs to redone and made more efficient in some way, way over my understanding.

I am pointing out that the people who are being most vocal about condemning what the NSA is doing...are, IN MY OPINION, the ones most likely to complain that the government is not doing enough to protect us...if an another attack came.

Quote:

I am pointing out that the people who are being most vocal about condemning what the NSA is doing...are, IN MY OPINION, the ones most likely to complain that the government is not doing enough to protect us...if an another attack came.

Tying up untold billions of dollars a year of resources for programs that had so far shown not to be useful is not a way to prevent future attacks!!!!!!!

In so must as the resources could be employed far better, those programs are making us less safe then more safe even disregarding the danger of having an arm of the government having blackmail materials on tap to be used against any one who go against their best interests such as congress members challenging them.

Angela Merkel has used the first, agenda-setting speech of her third term in office to criticise America's uncompromising defence of its surveillance activities.

In a speech otherwise typically short of strong emotion or rhetorical flourishes, the German chancellor found relatively strong words on NSA surveillance, two days before the US secretary of state, John Kerry, is due to visit Berlin.

"A programme in which the end justifies all means, in which everything that is technically possible is then acted out, violates trust and spreads mistrust," she said. "In the end, it produces not more but less security."

Merkel emphasised the need for wider access to the internet for citizens: "We want to make sure the internet retains its promise. That's why we want to protect it".

and it creates more mistrust amongst our allies.