But It's Working, Isn't It?

And if it's working, then who cares if it's unconstitutional or tyrannical?

NSA director Keith Alexander's testimony before the Senate has moved behind closed doors.
  UK Guardian

He needed some secrecy, no doubt.

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon asked Alexander how the NSA had made the transition to collecting "all phone records, all the time, all across America." Alexander said he'd answer in private.

Apparently he needed even MORE secrecy.

Alexander says phone data collection under section 215 of the Patriot Act has "helped prevent" "dozens of terrorist events" "here and abroad." But then he couched that: "When I say dozens, what I'm talking about here is that these authorities [phone records + Prism] complement each other."

Do you understand that? If so, clue me in.

Alexander said Internet surveillance carried out under section 702 of Fisa Amendments Act was the key to stopping Najibullah Zazi's 2009 plot to bomb the New York City subway. Prism, as the program is known, apparently identified an email that Zazi sent to an address in Pakistan known to be associated with al-Qaeda.

Oh. Well, that’s good, then.

However, given the fact that the target email address was already known to be suspect, It is unclear why this email could not have been identified by surveillance obtained under a specific warrant.

Oops.

[Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers] have attempted to justify the NSA's use of vast data sweeps such as Prism and Boundless Informant by pointing to the arrests and convictions of would-be New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi in 2009 and David Headley, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

[...]

But court documents lodged in the US and UK, as well as interviews with involved parties, suggest that [… c]onventional surveillance techniques, in both cases including old-fashioned tip-offs from intelligence services in Britain, appear to have initiated the investigations.

[...]

Feinstein and Rogers have also pointed to the case of David Headley, who in January was sentenced to 35 years in jail for having made multiple scouting missions to Mumbai ahead of the 2008 terrorist attacks that killed 168 people. Yet the evidence in his case also points towards a British tip-off as the inspiration behind the US interception of him.

  UK Guardian

Sounds like the Brits are doing our work for us while we waste agents collecting mountains of possibly useless metadata. Well, useless for catching terrorists.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.