For example, as of 2008, there were over 300 terrorists captured using intelligence generated from XKEYSCORE
This is so completely meaningless of a statement it should be a crime to have it on a government server. They give a number without any background to support it. I want the fucking names of these terrorists. Every single one. And I want to know what happened, how they were pursued/captured/convicted/terminated.
If I wrote shit like this in my career, it would be my ass. But when the government does it, I'm just supposed to accept it?!
On one hand, they tell us that they need to monitor everything to catch terrorists, and on the other hand, they don't seem to care that they can walk away once they're caught.
It's the same figure which was in the leaked documents from 2008 that points to some NSA/CSSM 1-52 document from 2007 as a basis. Perhaps they feel that this is the only justifiable piece of "statistics" they can provide at the moment. Though since the document was apparently OK to relay to foreign nations, this is likely another case of the "least untruthful" thing can say.
> "...captured using intelligence generated from..." is another of those trick phrases.
> It doesn't clearly imply that without the program they wouldn't have captured those terrorists.
Those are excellent points, and I wish they were raised more often. I'd like to add one more: How many of those captured were terrorists only thanks to your own government setting them up for the task first? In other words, how much of this was the result of "manufactured terrorism", ála FBI? (ref: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/terror-factory-f... and the earlier article linked from the story.)
After all, the actors in those programs still needed to communicate. Judging by the two articles the subjects weren't particularly bright either, so they probably would not have known how to protect their communications. Thus they were bound to generate material that would be scooped up the NSA programs. The fact that the plots were not only known in advance, but planned by your own government officials simply ensured that they would know with perfect accuracy where to look and what to look for.
A naked figure of "300 terrorists captured" is therefore meaningless, just like you said. Without a futher breakdown, the figure just feels like marketing.
As an odd side note - this makes manufactured terrorism look a bit like astroturfing. A scary thought.
oh god, how many billions did this program cost? I wonder what the dollar figure on cost per capture is, even assuming all 300 were legitimate. of course in reality they could just as easily have been thought crimes. no way to know.
