The author seems to ignore two things: real anonymity is hard and people (even terrorists) are lazy. So, if the criminal elements slip up once, it might be saved within Prism, Tempora or one of the other programs we need yet to discover. If it is saved there, algorithms or analysts can detect it and work backwards - or just overlook it because of the sheer amount of data.
I do not condone Prism or any other secret surveillance program in any way, please let me make that clear. But to say "haha, the NSA are idiots, terrorists surely are smarter" is an equally moronic (and dangerous) assumption. I think one of the problems is, that those projects have to be secret to work. Nobody outside a small circle knows if and when they helped to disrupt a plan that would have cost lives. On the other hand, the lack of a democratic oversight makes it easy for people involved to misuse their powers.
I think, Snowden and all the other whistleblowers are like the symptoms of a disease. If you see the symptoms, the self-healing of the body doesn't work anymore. and with self -healing i don't mean the cover up of stuff, but the clean up of something that went clearly wrong or too far. I think, every democracy as a whole should embrace whistleblowers and use the information to act on, not fight them.
The author seems to ignore two things: real anonymity is hard and people (even terrorists) are lazy. So, if the criminal elements slip up once, it might be saved within Prism, Tempora or one of the other programs we need yet to discover. If it is saved there, algorithms or analysts can detect it and work backwards - or just overlook it because of the sheer amount of data.
I do not condone Prism or any other secret surveillance program in any way, please let me make that clear. But to say "haha, the NSA are idiots, terrorists surely are smarter" is an equally moronic (and dangerous) assumption. I think one of the problems is, that those projects have to be secret to work. Nobody outside a small circle knows if and when they helped to disrupt a plan that would have cost lives. On the other hand, the lack of a democratic oversight makes it easy for people involved to misuse their powers.
I think, Snowden and all the other whistleblowers are like the symptoms of a disease. If you see the symptoms, the self-healing of the body doesn't work anymore. and with self -healing i don't mean the cover up of stuff, but the clean up of something that went clearly wrong or too far. I think, every democracy as a whole should embrace whistleblowers and use the information to act on, not fight them.