How many people died for us to end up with these rights? Thousands? Millions? Tens of millions? So is it ok to dash away 4th amendment rights to save hundreds? Thousands?

It just doesn't seem fair to everyone who sacrificed so much before us.

Isn't that exactly the argument inherent in gun control legislation?

Couldn't disagree more with this. I think the right to self-defense is very much and integral part of being human.

The problem that I see in the way these questions get asked or answered is in the speculation they leave up to the answerer to interpret. Asking the FBI whether an attack would haven't been thwarted if this tool didn't exist allows the FBI to answer from the imaginary perspective of having no tool at all. I feel like that's what we started seeing this morning.

It's a harder, longer conversation (than I suspect congress has patience for) to thoroughly evaluate whether alternative tools could have done the same job.

I also feel like we saw a very selective use of speculation. When asked whether this tool would have prevented 9/11 we got [paraphrased, barely] "We'll never know, but I can tell you this tool didn't exist back then". But when asked whether PRISM was essential in thwarting threats, or whether this leak has affected national security ongoing... the speculation was suddenly reasonable.

To be fair, Alexander seemed to think this way when it came to talking about the policy safeguards in place. At one point he was kind of falling all over himself with joy for how certain he thought it was that the American public would be pretty gosh-darned impressed at what a tight ship they're running over there (once they figure out how to release only information that will steer public opinion in that direction).

It's not an accident, they receive the questions for these public briefings in advance. The questioners receive guidance on what questions they may not ask, and how to ask the ones they can.

Also, am I the only one wondering why the number of attacks that these programs supposedly stopped increases every few days?

Of course, the lack of details gives us some details already. If it really was 50 9/11-scale attacks, they would have said so. That they have not said so tells us that these attacks were not important anyway.

How many people on the cusp of violent retaliation now feel justified to do what they only thought about before?

How many people who wouldn't dislike the U.S. will?

How many governments who would partner with the U.S. won't trust the country?

How much reason did they give people to hate them?

How much did they breach the Constitution and how is that different from anyone else doing it?

No sane person tries to blow up an airplane over NSA surveillance.

I think James Clapper should be fired, that we need to reevaluate the FISA court system, and (most radically) that NSA needs to be transitioned back into a foreign intelligence agency and be firewalled off from domestic law enforcement.

I don't think we should try to get there by making arguments that 99% of Americans will immediately reject, in part because even people who are sympathetic to the problem of an overreaching NSA will disagree strongly with them.

You could have stopped there.

Is 50 threats stopped that wouldn't have been enough to justify the intrusion of privacy? Would 100? Maybe 1000?

The question assumes that this is all negotiable, that there's some level at which we should be prepared to surrender fundamental freedoms. I claim that no such value exists.

Since the primary source of these threats seems to be from militant Islamicists, it would seem that we could get some measure of safety from banning Islam from America. How many thwarted attacks should it take for us to toss out the First Amendment?

It's difficult to prove that somebody is conspiring with a terrorist organization. Surely the need to prove a defendant guilty before a jury, is opening the door for terrorist attacks. How many thwarted attacks should we expect before we're willing to discard the Seventh Amendment? Oh, wait, we've already done that one in Guantanamo. Maybe we are on the way...

Surely you've noticed that there's a small but vocal minority that is heartily in favor of this, along with things like militarizing the border with Mexico, rounding up 1--12 million illegal aliens, and so on.

But it's actually my point that it's the ideals that matter. We can never say that the ends justify the means, because there's never actually an end: time just keeps rolling on.

So tell me: do you see me being unreasonable in a bad way? (This is a sincere question: what am I missing from my point of view?)

That's fine. The world needs idealists, but you have to understand when you don't get your way.

I know what u did last summer!!

Yeah, I'm the Queen of England. Really, but details are lacking.

Sorry NSA but I am not buying it, some megacorp is worried about losing billion dollar checks from FedGov