For example, right now any person in the country in their own home can print a smallpox virus using commercial available gene printers for a small amount of money that anyone who knows how can afford. It still takes some technical skill to accomplish, but not really that much.
How many times have they prevented this sort of thing via mass spying?
The real problem with spying on Americans is there's no real oversight to it.
I think the real problem is that it's unconstitutional, and oversight wouldn't change that, nor would it keep them in check. They'd either corrupt the oversight board, or simply ignore them.
There's even a name for it working: parallel construction.
Of course it works. Believing the dogma that they haven't caught anybody is like saying "but torture doesn't work!" or "lie detectors don't work!". All of them work, in their own way, but not in some perfect strawman way you might want them to.
And it's only unconstitutional if it's "unreasonable" and they're searching your person, house, papers, or effects. Your internet electrons leave your vicinity and they're not your personal effects. Whether it's "unreasonable" is for society and the courts to decide.
Really it's a simple question, do you trust every capable person in the country not to produce and distribute smallpox or do any other way of mass destruction? If so then you're nuts, but ok. If you don't then you either somehow prevent crazies from acting out or you restructure society to protect against all likely events like that.
Or you do nothing and wait for your inevitable end.
How many times have they prevented this sort of thing via mass spying?
I think the real problem is that it's unconstitutional, and oversight wouldn't change that, nor would it keep them in check. They'd either corrupt the oversight board, or simply ignore them.
There's even a name for it working: parallel construction.
Of course it works. Believing the dogma that they haven't caught anybody is like saying "but torture doesn't work!" or "lie detectors don't work!". All of them work, in their own way, but not in some perfect strawman way you might want them to.
And it's only unconstitutional if it's "unreasonable" and they're searching your person, house, papers, or effects. Your internet electrons leave your vicinity and they're not your personal effects. Whether it's "unreasonable" is for society and the courts to decide.
Really it's a simple question, do you trust every capable person in the country not to produce and distribute smallpox or do any other way of mass destruction? If so then you're nuts, but ok. If you don't then you either somehow prevent crazies from acting out or you restructure society to protect against all likely events like that.
Or you do nothing and wait for your inevitable end.