It's a tough call. If there is no surveillance, then all terror motivated crimes will get through. I can not speak for the US, but in Canada, there have been quite a few potential attacks prevented in part by acting on information gleaned using surveillance. The most recent one was where the US team provided the Canadian team with the information to stop the attack.
My question is ... how much is a life worth. If the Canadian government had surveillance on 25 million people and are able to prevent an attack that would kill 100 people, is it worth it? I don't have an answer.
be careful about taking at face value that quite a few potential attacks have been prevented. These agencies can say that and due to 'national security' and/or 'the privacy act', they don't' have produce any proof of their claims. As long as the people believe attacks are being prevented, the intrusions into privacy can continue and the funding will be there.
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Many attacks in the US have been facilitated by the FBI. What? Yes, our FBI will often times continually drop ideas into the heads of these people trying to bate them in to action. Often times the FBI has fueled the already burning mindset of a would be attacker, set them up with the props needed, led them to FBI informants, and given them the needed info to carry out plans that are often times fed to the by the FBI.
You can find more through a Google search, but here is an article and several good links through it to back up the claims. The FBI is not always being the good ole' boys in there attempts.
http://creativetimereports.org/2015/01/26/fbi-counterterrorism-lyric-cabral-david-felix-sutcliffe-sundance/
http://creativetimereports.org/2015/01/26/fbi-counterterrorism-lyric-cabral-david-felix-sutcliffe-sundance/
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I believe the only 3 real terror attacks that have been prevented since 911 have been prevented by citizen actions and have completely gotten past the government. All other attackers have carried out their plans, so not caught by the government, or the government themselves, such as the CIA and FBI, manipulated individuals into thinking they should carry out a terrorist act so that they could "stop" them. Which btw is ridiculous. Stopping someone from doing something they weren't going to do without that same person convincing them to do it isn't helping anyone.
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