Also, if you really want to “blow up” something, you should pick something with at least some potential to explode. The Brooklyn bridge will never “blow up” — at best, this guy would be able to collapse a couple small segments of the brooklyn bridge by detonating massive amounts of explosives on/under/beside it. A few dozen people, at most, would likely be killed. And any efforts to do so would likely be pretty visible to anyone nearby.

That’s why the government’s hesitation to provide details of this guys plan implies to me that, very likely, he’s even dumber than the airline shoe bomber, and had a lot less chance than the shoe bomber of ever accomplishing his goals. And he’s their shining example of why random evesdropping works . . .

This is empty rhetoric. Just because this idiot was planning to blow up the Brooklyn bridge doesn’t mean that his plan wouldn’t have been foiled without random eavesdropping.

How would it have been? The guy was not a known or suspected terrorist, and wasn’t on anyone’s radar screen.

“The only known terror case that the program contributed to is Faris,’ the Ohio truck driver who pleaded guilty in 2003 to helping al Qaeda by possibly plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. ”

“Government officials familiar with the program confirmed to CNN that wiretaps under the program helped lead authorities to Faris, but the officials provided no details.”

So we have one suspect who the government claims was caught by the program but “provided no details.” That’s not exactly heartwarmingly reassuring.

You said: As a result of this “illegal” program, the bridge is still standing, and Lord knows how many individuals are alive today.”

This is empty rhetoric. Just because this idiot was planning to blow up the Brooklyn bridge doesn’t mean that his plan wouldn’t have been foiled without random eavesdropping. And it’s a ridiculous plot anyway — as terrorist attacks go, blowing up the Brooklyn bridge has got to be way up there in the “high effort, low reward” category of targets.

Finally, you’re right, “Lord knows how many individuals are alive today” as a result of this program. The problem is, nobody else does. That’s no justification at all.

it’s amazing that we’ve reached the nuance point where only by revealing secrets can we show the the secrets in question should not be revealed, lest they damage programs meant to protect us from attacks, which only work while details of how they work remain secret

Yeah, well, that’s a pretty clever observation, except that the flip side argument is just as absurd — that the government’s programs against terrorism only work if we have no idea what they are or how effective they are. So when we ask “uh, how’s that fight against terrorism going” they say “we can’t tell you, or we’ll lose.” And when we say “uh, you’re spying on everyone. How do we know you’re actually using the information for fighting terrorism?” They say “well, we can’t tell you how we’re using this information, because if we do, it won’t work anymore.”

Granted, it’s possible that these super-secret operations are actually working. But considering what disasters the non-secret operations have turned out to be, it’s hard to have confidence when they tell us that the reall problem isn’t that they’re incompetent terrorist fighters — it’s that we keep asking them to prove that they’re NOT incompetent terrorist fighters.