Re:Ask HN: After the Paris Attack, have your feelings change...
by dragonwriter on Monday November 16, 2015 @04:55PM
(#10577510)
No, and I'm not sure why anyone would expect they would, given that the flowering of mass surveillance and crystallization of opinions around it happened in the wake of the much larger attacks of September 11, 2001.
Well, except that US global mass surveillance, presumably targeting groups including IS, has existed for many years, and is least restrained when it comes to non-US targets, and yet failed to provide information sufficient to prevent this attack (apparently, the information that an attack in the West was planned did turn up, but from Iraqi intelligence, not our mass surveillance, and not specific enough to identify even the targeted country.)
Well, except that US global mass surveillance, presumably targeting groups including IS, has existed for many years, and is least restrained when it comes to non-US targets, and yet failed to provide information sufficient to prevent this attack (apparently, the information that an attack in the West was planned did turn up, but from Iraqi intelligence, not our mass surveillance, and not specific enough to identify even the targeted country.)