>> Everytime there is a terrorist attack or mass shooting it seems that we get the same story of "they were known to the local police/FBI" or that their family had concerns
This isn't enough to judge the effectiveness of mass surveillance, because of course there would be misses - the question is how many - and of course we don't know.
But there's a natural "experiment" recently happening: lone wolf terrorism , which unlike terrorism before it , don't require communicating and planning together with others , all activities that can be detected by surveillance(see john rob's blog for more details), and even it's marketing is imprevious to surveillance.
And i get the general impression that this has led to a marked increase in terrorism , noticed strongly in Israel's latest lone wolf wave, for example[1] , and probably in france/Germany/US too.
[1]Israel lone wolf terrorism has mostly been done using cold weapons, so it's harm has been greatly decreased, but without mass surveillance, it's pretty reasonable guess that a lot of it would have been much more deadly.
This isn't enough to judge the effectiveness of mass surveillance, because of course there would be misses - the question is how many - and of course we don't know.
But there's a natural "experiment" recently happening: lone wolf terrorism , which unlike terrorism before it , don't require communicating and planning together with others , all activities that can be detected by surveillance(see john rob's blog for more details), and even it's marketing is imprevious to surveillance.
And i get the general impression that this has led to a marked increase in terrorism , noticed strongly in Israel's latest lone wolf wave, for example[1] , and probably in france/Germany/US too.
[1]Israel lone wolf terrorism has mostly been done using cold weapons, so it's harm has been greatly decreased, but without mass surveillance, it's pretty reasonable guess that a lot of it would have been much more deadly.