US officials claim that the government’s massive data collection has protected the country from terrorist attacks.
After The Guardian’s first revelations about the National Security Agency’s digital surveillance programs, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Mike Rogers, head of the House Intelligence Committee, jumped to the NSA’s defense by pointing to two terrorist plots supposedly foiled by the organization’s digital surveillance programs. Lawyers and policemen involved in these cases disputed these claims, but this did not keep NSA chief Keith Alexander from taking it up a notch by raising the number of foiled attacks to more than 50, and later to 54.
These numbers are crucial for an informed debate about the digital surveillance programs. If the NSA’s digital surveillance indeed prevented 54 terrorist attacks, the public can decide whether these 54 attacks are worth their privacy. This number would suggest that the NSA’s programs are actually keeping the United States and Europe safe from terrorism.
It is far from certain, however, that the NSA is getting its numbers right.
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