Edward Snowden on surveillance: what the evidence says · JRE #1536
SUBJECT: SURVEILLANCE
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
They said, you know, first they said mass surveillance had stopped 54 terrorist attacks in the United States. Then they dropped it to seven. And then they dropped it to one.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Officials did walk back the NSA's public justification for bulk surveillance over the course of 2013, though the specific numbers cited shifted across several congressional hearings rather than following one clean 54-to-seven-to-one sequence. NSA officials, including Director Keith Alexander, and President Obama initially credited the programs with disrupting over 50, later specified as 54, terrorist plots or events worldwide. Under questioning from Senator Patrick Leahy at a July 31, 2013 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, NSA Deputy Director John Inglis acknowledged that only 13 of the 54 cases had a homeland (U.S.) nexus, and that only one, the Basaaly Moalin material-support case, came close to being a case where the phone-records program was the actual ("but for") cause of disrupting activity. At a subsequent December 11, 2013 hearing, Alexander further specified that of twelve domestic cases, Section 215 bulk phone records played a "unique" role in one, "contributed" in seven, and had no demonstrated value in four. So the number seven does appear in the record, as the count of cases where records "contributed," alongside the number one as the sole case of unique/critical value, matching the broad trajectory Snowden describes even if the sequence of public figures (54, then 13, then 1, with 7 also appearing as a sub-count) was more layered than a simple three-step walkback.