2AC Terrorism DAMass Surveillance FailsTurn: mass surveillance makes it more difficult to find terroristsParis and Boston proveprefer empirical studiesOmtzigt & Schirmer 2015 (Pieter Omtzigt is a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe rapporteur on mass surveillance, and Gnter Schirmer is deputy head of the secretariat of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 2-23-2015 "Mass surveillance: wrong in practice as well as principle," openDemocracy, https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/pieter-omtzigt-g%C3%BCnter-schirmer/mass-surveillance-wrong-in-practice-as-well-as-principle) AB

In fact, two solid empirical studies on either side of the Atlantic, cited in the report of the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee, have shown that mass surveillance has not proved effective in the prevention of terrorist attacks, whereas targeted surveillance has. These studies have shown that those, like the former NSA director, General Keith Alexander, who insist on collecting the whole haystack are not really helping the fight against terrorism. Jim Sensenbrenner, a veteran Republican member of Congress, pointed out that the bigger haystack makes it harder to find the needle. And Thomas Drake, a former NSA executive turned critic, said that if you target everything, theres no target. An analysis of the Boston marathon bombing in April 2013 showed that alarm signals pointing to the future perpetrator were lost in a mass of alerts generated by tactics that threw the net too widely. In short, mass surveillance may actually help terrorists because it diverts limited resources away from traditional law enforcement, which gathers more intelligence on a smaller set of targets. In both the Boston and Paris cases, the perpetrators had been on the radar of the authorities for some time, but the relevant intelligence was not followed up properly because it was drowned in a mass of data. By flooding the system with false positives, big-data approaches to counter-terrorism actually make it harder to identify and stop the real terrorists before they strike. Mass surveillance isnt useful to catch terroriststhis card smokes all aff warrantsprefer recent studiesCahall et al. 2014 [Bailey Cahall writes for New America, David Sterman is a program associate at New America and holds a master's degree from Georgetowns Center for Security Studies, Emily Schneider is a senior program associate for the International Security Program at New America, Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and a fellow at Fordham University's Center on National Security. He is the editor of the South Asia Channel and South Asia Daily Brief on foreignpolicy.com and is a contributing editor at The New Republic and Foreign Policy and he writes a weekly column for CNN.com, 1-13-2014, "Do NSA's Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists?," New America, https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/do-nsas-bulk-surveillance-programs-stop-terrorists/] ABOn June 5, 2013, the Guardian broke the first story in what would become a flood of revelations regarding the extent and nature of the NSAs surveillance programs. Facing an uproar over the threat such programs posed to privacy, the Obama administration scrambled to defend them as legal and essential to U.S. national security and counterterrorism. Two weeks after the first leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden were published, President Obama defended the NSA surveillance programs during a visit to Berlin, saying: We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats here in Germany. So lives have been saved. Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, testified before Congress that: the information gathered from these programs provided the U.S. government with critical leads to help prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said on the House floor in July that 54 times [the NSA programs] stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe saving real lives. However, our review of the governments claims about the role that NSA bulk surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading. An in-depth analysis of 225 individuals recruited by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group or inspired by al-Qaedas ideology, and charged in the United States with an act of terrorism since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional investigative methods, such as the use of informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations, provided the initial impetus for investigations in the majority of cases, while the contribution of NSAs bulk surveillance programs to these cases was minimal. Indeed, the controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata, which includes the telephone numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time and date of those calls but not their content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, appears to have played an identifiable role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent of these cases. NSA programs involving the surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act played a role in 4.4 percent of the terrorism cases we examined, and NSA surveillance under an unidentified authority played a role in 1.3 percent of the cases we examined. Regular FISA warrants not issued in connection with Section 215 or Section 702, which are the traditional means for investigating foreign persons, were used in at least 48 (21 percent) of the cases we looked at, although its unclear whether these warrants played an initiating role or were used at a later point in the investigation. (Click on the link to go to a database of all 225 individuals, complete with additional details about them and the governments investigations of these cases: http://natsec.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis). Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group. Furthermore, our examination of the role of the database of U.S. citizens telephone metadata in the single plot the government uses to justify the importance of the program that of Basaaly Moalin, a San Diego cabdriver who in 2007 and 2008 provided $8,500 to al-Shabaab, al-Qaedas affiliate in Somalia calls into question the necessity of the Section 215 bulk collection program. According to the government, the database of American phone metadata allows intelligence authorities to quickly circumvent the traditional burden of proof associated with criminal warrants, thus allowing them to connect the dots faster and prevent future 9/11-scale attacks. Yet in the Moalin case, after using the NSAs phone database to link a number in Somalia to Moalin, the FBI waited two months to begin an investigation and wiretap his phone. Although its unclear why there was a delay between the NSA tip and the FBI wiretapping, court documents show there was a two-month period in which the FBI was not monitoring Moalins calls, despite official statements that the bureau had Moalins phone number and had identified him. , This undercuts the governments theory that the database of Americans telephone metadata is necessary to expedite the investigative process, since it clearly didnt expedite the process in the single case the government uses to extol its virtues. Additionally, a careful review of three of the key terrorism cases the government has cited to defend NSA bulk surveillance programs reveals that government officials have exaggerated the role of the NSA in the cases against David Coleman Headley and Najibullah Zazi, and the significance of the threat posed by a notional plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange. In 28 percent of the cases we reviewed, court records and public reporting do not identify which specific methods initiated the investigation. These cases, involving 62 individuals, may have been initiated by an undercover informant, an undercover officer, a family member tip, other traditional law enforcement methods, CIA- or FBI-generated intelligence, NSA surveillance of some kind, or any number of other methods. In 23 of these 62 cases (37 percent), an informant was used. However, we were unable to determine whether the informant initiated the investigation or was used after the investigation was initiated as a result of the use of some other investigative means. Some of these cases may also be too recent to have developed a public record large enough to identify which investigative tools were used. We have also identified three additional plots that the government has not publicly claimed as NSA successes, but in which court records and public reporting suggest the NSA had a role. However, it is not clear whether any of those three cases involved bulk surveillance programs. Finally, the overall problem for U.S. counterterrorism officials is not that they need vaster amounts of information from the bulk surveillance programs, but that they dont sufficiently understand or widely share the information they already possess that was derived from conventional law enforcement and intelligence techniques. This was true for two of the 9/11 hijackers who were known to be in the United States before the attacks on New York and Washington, as well as with the case of Chicago resident David Coleman Headley, who helped plan the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and it is the unfortunate pattern we have also seen in several other significant terrorism cases.It is statistically impossible for mass surveillance to be effective at finding terroriststhe US is super paranoidthis card is fireRudmin 2006 (Floyd Rudmin is Professor of Social & Community Psychology at the University of Troms in Norway, MAY 24, 2006, "Why Does the NSA Engage in Mass Surveillance of Americans When Its Statistically Impossible for Such Spying to Detect Terrorists? CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/05/24/why-does-the-nsa-engage-in-mass-surveillance-of-americans-when-it-s-statistically-impossible-for-such-spying-to-detect-terrorists/) ABIn addition, however, mass surveillance of an entire population cannot find terrorists. It is a probabilistic impossibility. It cannot work. What is the probability that people are terrorists given that NSAs mass surveillance identifies them as terrorists? If the probability is zero (p=0.00), then they certainly are not terrorists, and NSA was wasting resources and damaging the lives of innocent citizens. If the probability is one (p=1.00), then they definitely are terrorists, and NSA has saved the day. If the probability is fifty-fifty (p=0.50), that is the same as guessing the flip of a coin. The conditional probability that people are terrorists given that the NSA surveillance system says they are, that had better be very near to one (p_1.00) and very far from zero (p=0.00). The mathematics of conditional probability were figured out by the Scottish logician Thomas Bayes. If you Google "Bayes Theorem", you will get more than a million hits. Bayes Theorem is taught in all elementary statistics classes. Everyone at NSA certainly knows Bayes Theorem. To know if mass surveillance will work, Bayes theorem requires three estimations: 1) The base-rate for terrorists, i.e. what proportion of the population are terrorists. 2) The accuracy rate, i.e., the probability that real terrorists will be identified by NSA; 3) The misidentification rate, i.e., the probability that innocent citizens will be misidentified by NSA as terrorists. No matter how sophisticated and super-duper are NSAs methods for identifying terrorists, no matter how big and fast are NSAs computers, NSAs accuracy rate will never be 100% and their misidentification rate will never be 0%. That fact, plus the extremely low base-rate for terrorists, means it is logically impossible for mass surveillance to be an effective way to find terrorists. I will not put Bayes computational formula here. It is available in all elementary statistics books and is on the web should any readers be interested. But I will compute some conditional probabilities that people are terrorists given that NSAs system of mass surveillance identifies them to be terrorists. The US Census shows that there are about 300 million people living in the USA. Suppose that there are 1,000 terrorists there as well, which is probably a high estimate. The base-rate would be 1 terrorist per 300,000 people. In percentages, that is .00033% which is way less than 1%. Suppose that NSA surveillance has an accuracy rate of .40, which means that 40% of real terrorists in the USA will be identified by NSAs monitoring of everyones email and phone calls. This is probably a high estimate, considering that terrorists are doing their best to avoid detection. There is no evidence thus far that NSA has been so successful at finding terrorists. And suppose NSAs misidentification rate is .0001, which means that .01% of innocent people will be misidentified as terrorists, at least until they are investigated, detained and interrogated. Note that .01% of the US population is 30,000 people. With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSAs system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.0132, which is near zero, very far from one. Ergo, NSAs surveillance system is useless for finding terrorists. Suppose that NSAs system is more accurate than .40, lets say, .70, which means that 70% of terrorists in the USA will be found by mass monitoring of phone calls and email messages. Then, by Bayes Theorem, the probability that a person is a terrorist if targeted by NSA is still only p=0.0228, which is near zero, far from one, and useless. Suppose that NSAs system is really, really, really good, really, really good, with an accuracy rate of .90, and a misidentification rate of .00001, which means that only 3,000 innocent people are misidentified as terrorists. With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSAs system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.2308, which is far from one and well below flipping a coin. NSAs domestic monitoring of everyones email and phone calls is useless for finding terrorists. NSA knows this. Bayes Theorem is elementary common knowledge. So, why does NSA spy on Americans knowing its not possible to find terrorists that way? Mass surveillance of the entire population is logically sensible only if there is a higher base-rate. Higher base-rates arise from two lines of thought, neither of them very nice: 1) McCarthy-type national paranoia; 2) political espionage. The whole NSA domestic spying program will seem to work well, will seem logical and possible, if you are paranoid. Instead of presuming there are 1,000 terrorists in the USA, presume there are 1 million terrorists. Americans have gone paranoid before, for example, during the McCarthyism era of the 1950s. Imagining a million terrorists in America puts the base-rate at .00333, and now the probability that a person is a terrorist given that NSAs system identifies them is p=.99, which is near certainty. But only if you are paranoid. If NSAs surveillance requires a presumption of a million terrorists, and if in fact there are only 100 or only 10, then a lot of innocent people are going to be misidentified and confidently mislabeled as terrorists. The ratio of real terrorists to innocent people in the prison camps of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Kandahar shows that the US is paranoid and is not bothered by mistaken identifications of innocent people. The ratio of real terrorists to innocent people on Bushs no-fly lists shows that the Bush administration is not bothered by mistaken identifications of innocent Americans. Also, mass surveillance of the entire population is logically plausible if NSAs domestic spying is not looking for terrorists, but looking for something else, something that is not so rare as terrorists. For example, the May 19 Fox News opinion poll of 900 registered voters found that 30% dislike the Bush administration so much they want him impeached. If NSA were monitoring email and phone calls to identify pro-impeachment people, and if the accuracy rate were .90 and the error rate were .01, then the probability that people are pro-impeachment given that NSA surveillance system identified them as such, would be p=.98, which is coming close to certainty (p_1.00). Mass surveillance by NSA of all Americans phone calls and emails would be very effective for domestic political intelligence. But finding a few terrorists by mass surveillance of the phone calls and email messages of 300 million Americans is mathematically impossible, and NSA certainly knows that.Mass data surveillance leads to false leads, and can NEVER solveCorrigan 15 (Ray Corrigan; Ray Corrigan is a senior lecturer in mathematics, computing, and technology at the Open University, U.K. Jan/25/2015; Mass Surveillance Will Not Stop TerrorismLets do the math.; http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2015/01/mass_surveillance_against_terrorism_gathering_intelligence_on_all_is_statistically.html)Mass data collectors can dig deeply into anyones digital persona but dont have the resources to do so with everyone. Surveillance of the entire population, the vast majority of whom are innocent, leads to the diversion of limited intelligence resources in pursuit of huge numbers of false leads. Terrorists are comparatively rare, so finding one is a needle-in-a-haystack problem. You dont make it easier by throwing more needleless hay on the stack.It is statistically impossible for total population surveillance to be an effective tool for catching terrorists. Even if your magic terrorist-catching machine has a false positive rate of 1 in 1,000and no security technology comes anywhere near thisevery time you asked it for suspects in the U.K. it would flag 60,000 innocent people.

Getting more data on terrorists can not solve. And relying on it leads to a violation of privacy, and an increase in terrorist attacksEddington 15 (Patrick Eddington Patrick Eddington is a policy analyst in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute. He was formerly a senior policy advisor to Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) and a military imagery analyst at the CIAs National Photographic Interpretation Center.; No, Mass Surveillance Won't Stop Terrorist Attacks; January 27, 2015; http://reason.com/archives/2015/01/27/mass-surveillance-and-terrorism#.bnquoh:U8Io)2009: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabi.e., the "underwear bomber"nearly succeeded in downing the airline he was on over Detroit because, according to then-National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) director Michael Leiter, the federal Intelligence Community (IC) failed "to connect, integrate, and fully understand the intelligence" it had collected. 2009: Army Major Nidal Hasan was able to conduct his deadly, Anwar al-Awlaki-inspired rampage at Ft. Hood, Texas, because the FBI bungled its Hasan investigation. 2013: The Boston Marathon bombing happened, at least in part, because the CIA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, NCC, and National Security Agency (NSA) failed to properly coordinate and share information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his family, associations, and travel to and from Russia in 2012. Those failures were detailed in a 2014 report prepared by the Inspectors General of the IC, Department of Justice, CIA, and DHS.2014: The Charlie Hebdo and French grocery store attackers were not only known to French and U.S. authorities but one had a prior terrorism conviction and another was monitored for years by French authorities until less than a year before the attack on the magazine.No, mass surveillance does not prevent terrorist attacks. Its worth remembering that the mass surveillance programs initiated by the U.S. government after the 9/11 attacksthe legal ones and the constitutionally-dubious oneswere premised on the belief that bin Ladens hijacker-terrorists were able to pull off the attacks because of a failure to collect enough data. Yet in their subsequent reports on the attacks, the Congressional Joint Inquiry (2002) and the 9/11 Commission found exactly the opposite. The data to detect (and thus foil) the plots was in the U.S. governments hands prior to the attacks; the failures were ones of sharing, analysis, and dissemination. That malady perfectly describes every intelligence failure from Pearl Harbor to the present day. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (created by Congress in 2004) was supposed to be the answer to the "failure-to-connect-the-dots" problem. Ten years on, the problem remains, the IC bureaucracy is bigger than ever, and our government is continuing to rely on mass surveillance programs that have failed time and again to stop terrorists while simultaneously undermining the civil liberties and personal privacy of every American. The quest to "collect it all," to borrow a phrase from NSA Director Keith Alexander, only leads to the accumulation of masses of useless information, making it harder to find real threats and costing billions to store. A recent Guardian editorial noted that such mass-surveillance myopia is spreading among European political leaders as well, despite the fact that "terrorists, from 9/11 to the Woolwich jihadists and the neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, have almost always come to the authorities attention before murdering." Mass surveillance is not only destructive of our liberties, its continued use is a virtual guarantee of more lethal intelligence failures. And our continued will to disbelieve those facts is a mental dodge we engage in at our peril.Mass data surveillance can never prevent attacks. Only action can be taken AFTER the devastating consequences occur.Macherez 2015 (journalist/reporter for VICE. Education at UC Riverside. Bruce Schneier is an American cryptographer, computer security and privacy specialist, and writer. He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography. Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, a program fellow at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute and the CTO of Resilient Systems.[2] He is also a contributing writer for The Guardian news organization. This Security Expert Reckons Mass Surveillance Doesn't Stop Terror Attacks June 26, 2015; http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/bruce-schneier-mass-surveillance-wont-stop-terror-876)France's new surveillance law has already been compared to the late American Patriot Act an American anti-terrorism act passed after 9/11 which was criticised for its wide-sweeping powers that meant it was used against non-terrorists. Such civil liberties concerns will be felt less acutely today. The argument that it was poor intelligence and surveillance that enabled terrorists to carry out the attack at the gas factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier have started circulating on French social media. Back in March, we spoke to Bruce Schneier an American cryptographer specialising in computer security. In his latest bestseller, Data and Goliath, Schneier makes the argument that civil liberties implications aside mass surveillance can't stop terrorist attacks. The interview takes on a renewed significance in the light of today's events. VICE: The NSA uses the metaphor "connecting the dots" to justify its surveillance activities. However the US government actually struggles to ever connect those dots. Why is that? Bruce Schneier: There is too much external noise when you do mass surveillance. The problem is that "connecting the dots" is neither the right method nor the right metaphor. When you look at a child's colouring book, connecting the dots is very easy because they are all visible they are all on the same page and they have numbers written on them. All you have to do is move the lead of your pencil across your page, from one dot to the other, and there you go the drawing is done. In reality, those "dots" can only be seen and connected after things have occurred so after each terrorist attack, if you want. When you look, it's easy to make the link between, say, an information request coming from Russia, a visit abroad, and other potential information gathered elsewhere. So with hindsight, we know who the terrorists are. That's why we're able to chase after them, but not stop them. Before an event occurs, there is an extremely huge number of potential "human dangers," and an even greater number of possible scenarios. There are so many variables to take into account that it's impossible to rely on a single potential course of events. You're saying that mass surveillance cannot really stop terrorist attacks in the US. Would you say the same for France? Mass surveillance is unreliable for statistical reasons, not for cultural or linguistic reasons. That analysis is valid for all countries, including France.

Metadata clearly undermines international law and privacy rights and has 0 direct effect on counter-terror efforts compared to targeted surveillance Greenwald 14, (Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of fourNew York Timesbest-selling books on politics and law. His most recent book,No Place to Hide, is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenns column was featured atTheGuardianandSalon. He was the debut winner, along with Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. For his 2013 NSA reporting, he received the George Polk award for National Security Reporting; the Gannett Foundation award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation watchdog journalism award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (he was the first non-Brazilian to win), and the Electronic Frontier Foundations Pioneer Award. Along with Laura Poitras,Foreign Policymagazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. The NSA reporting he led forTheGuardianwas awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service, UN Report Finds Mass Surveillance Violates International Treaties and Privacy Rights, The Intercept, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/15/un-investigator-report-condemns-mass-surveillance/)The United Nations top official for counter-terrorism and human rights (known as the Special Rapporteur) issued a formal report to the U.N. General Assembly today that condemns mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions. The hard truth is that the use of mass surveillance technology effectively does away with the right to privacy of communications on the Internet altogether, the report concluded. Central to the Rapporteurs findings is the distinction between targeted surveillance which depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization and mass surveillance, whereby states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites. In a system of mass surveillance, the report explained, all of this is possible without any prior suspicion related to a specific individual or organization. The communications of literally every Internet user are potentially open for inspection by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the States concerned. Mass surveillance thus amounts to a systematic interference with the right to respect for the privacy of communications, it declared. As a result, it is incompatible with existing concepts of privacy for States to collect all communications or metadata all the time indiscriminately. In concluding that mass surveillance impinges core privacy rights, the report was primarily focused on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty enacted by the General Assembly in 1966, to which all of the members of the Five Eyes alliance are signatories. The U.S.ratified the treaty in 1992, albeit with various reservations that allowed for the continuation of the death penalty and which rendered its domestic law supreme. With the exception of the U.S.s Persian Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar), virtually every major country has signed the treaty. Article 17 of the Covenant guarantees the right of privacy, the defining protection of which, the report explained, is that individuals have the right to share information and ideas with one another without interference by the State, secure in the knowledge that their communication will reach and be read by the intended recipients alone. The reports key conclusion is that this core right is impinged by mass surveillance programs: Bulk access technology is indiscriminately corrosive of online privacy and impinges on the very essence of the right guaranteed by article 17. In the absence of a formal derogation from States obligations under the Covenant, these programs pose a direct and ongoing challenge to an established norm of international law. The report recognized that protecting citizens from terrorism attacks is a vital duty of every state, and that the right of privacy is not absolute, as it can be compromised when doing so is necessary to serve compelling purposes. It noted: There may be a compelling counter-terrorism justification for the radical re-evaluation of Internet privacy rights that these practices necessitate. But the report was adamant that no such justifications have ever been demonstrated by any member state using mass surveillance: The States engaging in mass surveillance have so far failed to provide a detailed and evidence-based public justification for its necessity, and almost no States have enacted explicit domestic legislation to authorize its use. Instead, explained the Rapporteur, states have relied on vague claims whose validity cannot be assessed because of the secrecy behind which these programs are hidden: The arguments in favor of a complete abrogation of the right to privacy on the Internet have not been made publicly by the States concerned or subjected to informed scrutiny and debate. About the ongoing secrecy surrounding the programs, the report explained that states deploying this technology retain a monopoly of information about its impact, which is a form of conceptual censorship that precludes informed debate. A June report from the High Commissioner for Human Rights similarly noted the disturbing lack of governmental transparency associated with surveillance policies, laws and practices, which hinders any effort to assess their coherence with international human rights law and to ensure accountability. The rejection of the terrorism justification for mass surveillance as devoid of evidence echoes virtually every other formal investigation into these programs. A federal judge last December found that the U.S. Government was unable to cite a single case in which analysis of the NSAs bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack. Later that month, President Obamas own Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies concluded that mass surveillance was not essential to preventing attacks and information used to detect plots could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders. Three Democratic Senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee wrotein The New York Times that the usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated and we have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security. A study by the centrist New America Foundation found that mass metadata collection has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and, where plots were disrupted, traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the tip or evidence to initiate the case. It labeled the NSAs claims to the contrary as overblown and even misleading. While worthless in counter-terrorism policies, the UN report warned that allowing mass surveillance to persist with no transparency creates an ever present danger of purpose creep, by which measures justified on counter-terrorism grounds are made available for use by public authorities for much less weighty public interest purposes. Citing the UK as one example, the report warned that, already, a wide range of public bodies have access to communications data, for a wide variety of purposes, often without judicial authorization or meaningful independent oversight. The report was most scathing in its rejection of a key argument often madeby American defenders of the NSA: that mass surveillance is justified because Americans are given special protections (the requirement of a FISA court order for targeted surveillance) which non-Americans (95% of the world) do not enjoy. Not only does this scheme fail to render mass surveillance legal, but it itself constitutes a separate violation of international treaties (emphasis added): The Special Rapporteur concurs with the High Commissioner for Human Rights that where States penetrate infrastructure located outside their territorial jurisdiction, they remain bound by their obligations under the Covenant. Moreover, article 26 of the Covenant prohibits discrimination on grounds of, inter alia, nationality and citizenship. The Special Rapporteur thus considers that States are legally obliged to afford the same privacy protection for nationals and non-nationals and for those within and outside their jurisdiction. Asymmetrical privacy protection regimes are a clear violation of the requirements of the Covenant. That principle that the right of internet privacy belongs to all individuals, not just Americans was invoked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when he explained in a June, 2013 interview at The Guardian why he disclosed documents showing global surveillance rather than just the surveillance of Americans: More fundamentally, the US Persons protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because its only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. =The U.N. Rapporteur was clear that these systematic privacy violations are the result of a union between governments and tech corporations: States increasingly rely on the private sector to facilitate digital surveillance. This is not confined to the enactment of mandatory data retention legislation. Corporates [sic] have also been directly complicit in operationalizing bulk access technology through the design of communications infrastructure that facilitates mass surveillance. The latest finding adds to the growing number of international formal rulings that the mass surveillance programs of the U.S. and its partners are illegal. In January, the European parliaments civil liberties committee condemned such programs in the strongest possible terms. In April, the European Court of Justice ruled that European legislation on data retention contravened EU privacy rights. A top secret memo from the GCHQ,published last year by The Guardian, explicitly stated that one key reason for concealing these programs was fear of a damaging public debate and specifically legal challenges against the current regime. The report ended with a call for far greater transparency along with new protections for privacy in the digital age. Continuation of the status quo, it warned, imposes a risk that systematic interference with the security of digital communications will continue to proliferate without any serious consideration being given to the implications of the wholesale abandonment of the right to online privacy. The urgency of these reforms is underscored, explained the Rapporteur, by a conclusion of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that permitting the government to routinely collect the calling records of the entire nation fundamentally shifts the balance of power between the state and its citizens.

AT: BootTheir longitudinal studies are overblown and misleadingmass surveillance makes it more difficult to find terroristsDenver Nicks, journalist for TIME, 1-13-2014, "Report: Usefulness of NSA Mass Surveillance Overblown," TIME, http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/13/report-usefulness-of-nsa-mass-surveillance-overblown/Ever since Edward Snowdens leaks began revealing the extent of the National Security Agencys mass surveillanceor bulk collectionprograms last June, officials have defended the programs with one number: 50. We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats here in Germany. So lives have been saved, President Obama said on a visit to Berlin. NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander made the same claim testifying before Congress. But a new study out Monday from The New America Foundation says that claim is simply false, calling it overblown, and even misleading. Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group, says the nonpartisan think tanks report, titled Do NSAs Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists? In an analysis of 225 al-Qaeda-linked individuals charged with terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11, the report found NSA mass surveillance of Americans telephone recordsauthorized under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Actplayed an identifiable role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent of investigations. The report acknowledges that in 28 percent of cases it reviewed, researchers couldnt determine what methods initiated the investigation. But in many of those cases an informant played a role in the investigation, says the report. ACLU Legislative Counsel Michelle Richardson told TIME the report confirms that the numbers and examples the government has floated in support of its domestic spying programs are grossly inflated. More broadly though, it underlines how far the government has actually gotten away from the original lessons of 9/11. Instead of working on connecting the dots collected from traditional investigations, it has become obsessed with collecting ever more data whether it is useful or not.A2: NSA Can Reform Itself

The NSA cant reform itself, must come from above Schneier 13, (Bruce Schneier is acontributing writer forThe Atlanticand the chief technology officer of the computer-security firm Co3Systems. His latest book isCarry On: Sound Advice From Schneier on Security. The NSA-Reform Pardox: Stop Domestic Spying, Get More Security, The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/the-nsa-reform-paradox-stop-domestic-spying-get-more-security/279537/) Regardless of how we got here, the NSA cant reform itself. Change cannot come from within; it has to come from above. Its the job of government: of Congress, of the courts, and of the president. These are the people who have the ability to investigate how things became so bad, rein in the rogue agency, and establish new systems of transparency, oversight, and accountability.Foreign Surveillance OutweighsForeign surveillance is successful and is key to counter terrorism while domestic surveillance is notprefer our classified information that only our author has access to Leahy 2014 (Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, 7-31-2013, "Senate Judiciary Committee Holds Oversight Hearing On Government Surveillance Programs," http://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/senate-judiciary-committee-holds-oversight-hearing-on-government-surveillance-programs)Today, the Judiciary Committee will scrutinize government surveillance programs conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. In the years since September 11th, Congress has repeatedly expanded the scope of FISA, and given the Government sweeping new powers to collect information on law-abiding Americans and we must carefully consider now whether those laws have gone too far. Last month, many Americans learned for the first time that one of these authorities Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act has for years been secretly interpreted to authorize the collection of Americans phone records on an unprecedented scale. Information was also leaked about Section 702 of FISA, which authorizes NSA to collect the communications of foreigners overseas. Let me make clear that I do not condone the way these and other highly classified programs were disclosed, and I am concerned about the potential damage to our intelligence-gathering capabilities and national security. We need to hold people accountable for allowing such a massive leak to occur, and we need to examine how to prevent this type of breach in the future. In the wake of these leaks, the President said that this is an opportunity to have an open and thoughtful debate about these issues. I welcome that statement, because this is a debate that several of us on this Committee have been trying to have for years. And if we are going to have the debate that the President called for, the executive branch must be a full partner. We need straightforward answers and I am concerned that we are not getting them. Just recently, the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged that he provided false testimony about the NSA surveillance programs during a Senate hearing in March, and his office had to remove a fact sheet from its website after concerns were raised about its accuracy. I appreciate that it is difficult to talk about classified programs in public settings, but the American people expect and deserve honest answers. It also has been far too difficult to get a straight answer about the effectiveness of the Section 215 phone records program. Whether this program is a critical national security tool is a key question for Congress as we consider possible changes to the law. Some supporters of this program have repeatedly conflated the efficacy of the Section 215 bulk metadata collection program with that of Section 702 of FISA. I do not think this is a coincidence, and it needs to stop. The patience and trust of the American people is starting to wear thin. I asked General Alexander about the effectiveness of the Section 215 phone records program at an Appropriations Committee hearing last month, and he agreed to provide a classified list of terrorist events that Section 215 helped to prevent. I have reviewed that list. Although I agree that it speaks to the value of the overseas content collection implemented under Section 702, it does not do the same with for Section 215. The list simply does not reflect dozens or even several terrorist plots that Section 215 helped thwart or prevent let alone 54, as some have suggested. These facts matter. This bulk collection program has massive privacy implications. The phone records of all of us in this room reside in an NSA database. I have said repeatedly that just because we have the ability to collect huge amounts of data does not mean that we should be doing so. In fact, it has been reported that the bulk collection of Internet metadata was shut down because it failed to produce meaningful intelligence. We need to take an equally close look at the phone records program. If this program is not effective, it must end. And so far, I am not convinced by what I have seen. We dont end foreign surveillance under section 702its proven to be successful and is key to stopping both domestic and global terrorism Dinan 2014 (Stephen Dinan, journalist at Washington Times, citing the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, 7-2-2014, "Foreign intelligence snooping stopped dozens of terrorist plots: Privacy board," Washingtion Times, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/2/foreign-intelligence-snooping-stopped-terror-plots/)At least some of the governments snooping programs get high marks from the federal privacy watchdog, which approved a report Wednesday saying foreign intelligence collection is generally done in accordance with the Constitution and has been remarkably successful in sniffing out terrorist plots. Programs operated under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, have helped the government learn terrorist networks priorities and tactics, and to identify previously unknown terrorists and deny them entry into the U.S., the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board said in its report. The privacy board said it reviewed about 20 cases where Section 702 data was used to support an existing counterterrorism investigation, and about 30 cases where the Section 702 data was the initial catalyst that led to identifying unknown terrorists or uncovering secret plots. All told, Section 702 data has led to well over one hundred arrests on terrorism-related offenses, and headed off about 15 plots in the U.S. and 40 in other countries, the board concluded. Section 702 data was helpful in picking up the trail of the plot to bomb the New York City subway system, and also helped identify Khalid Ouazzani, who was previously unknown to intelligence agencies but who was eventually convicted of providing material support to al Qaeda, the board said. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the report was a vindication for the Section 702 programs, which have come under fire from civil rights advocates who say they can end up grabbing information on Americans in warrantless backdoor searches. The government operates two programs under Section 702. One, PRISM, collects Internet communications from a specific overseas non-American target, while the other, known as upstream collection, grabs Internet or telephone communications straight off the backbone systems.Foreign surveillance has prevented multiple terrorist plotsno evidence for why section 215 is necessaryWyden & Udall 2013 (Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), 6-19-2013, "Wyden, Udall Issue Statement on Effectiveness of Declassified NSA Programs," http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-udall-issue-statement-on-effectiveness-of-declassified-nsa-programs)Based on the evidence that we have seen, it appears that multiple terrorist plots have been disrupted at least in part because of information obtained under section 702 of FISA. However, it appears that the bulk phone records collection program under section 215 of the USA Patriot Act played little or no role in most of these disruptions. Saying that these programs have disrupted dozens of potential terrorist plots is misleading if the bulk phone records collection program is actually providing little or no unique value. The Intelligence Community notes that the massive collection of phone records under Section 215 has provided some relevant information in a few terrorism cases, but it is still unclear to us why agencies investigating terrorism do not simply obtain this information directly from phone companies using a regular court order. If the NSA is only reviewing those records that meet a reasonable suspicion standard, then there is no reason it shouldnt be able to get court orders for the records it actually needs. Making a few hundred of these requests per year would clearly not overwhelm the FISA Court. And the law already allows the government to issue emergency authorizations to get these records quickly in urgent circumstances. The NSAs five-year retention period for phone records is longer than the retention period used by some phone companies, but the NSA still has not provided us with any examples of instances where it relied on its bulk collection authority to review records that the relevant phone company no longer possessed. In fact, we have yet to see any evidence that the bulk phone records collection program has provided any otherwise unobtainable intelligence. It may be more convenient for the NSA to collect this data in bulk, rather than directing specific queries to the various phone companies, but in our judgment convenience alone does not justify the collection of the personal information of huge numbers of ordinary Americans if the same or more information can be obtained using less intrusive methods.War on Terror TurnUniqueness: the US is losing War on Terrorinternational, not domestic, terrorist groups pose the greatest threat to securityRothkopf 2014 (David Rothkopf is CEO and Editor of the Foreign Policy Group, 6-10-2014, "We Are Losing the War on Terror," Foreign Policy, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/10/we-are-losing-the-war-on-terror/)The ground truth about the spread of terrorism will be a hard one for many Americans to swallow after 13 costly years of war. Terrorism is spreading worldwide. Our enemies have sustained our blows, adapted, and grown. Two questions loom large as a consequence: Where did we go wrong and what do we do now? Recent headlines and new studies support the conclusion that global terror trends are heading in an ever more dangerous direction. In early June, the Rand Corporation released a study that detailed the growing threat. It reports that in 2007, there were 28 Salafi-jihadist groups like al Qaeda. As of last year, there were 49. In 2007, these groups conducted 100 attacks. Last year, they conducted 950. The study estimates that there were between 18,000 and 42,000 such terrorists active seven years ago. The low-end estimate for last year, at 44,000, is higher than the top estimate for 2007, and the new high-end estimate is 105,000. The administration rightly argues that "core al Qaeda" has sustained "huge" damage. But "core al Qaeda" no longer poses the principle threat to the U.S. homeland. That comes, according to the Rand report, from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. As Rand summarizes the report: "Since 2010, there has been a 58 percent increase in the number of jihadist groups, a doubling of jihadist fighters and a tripling of attacks by Al Qaeda affiliates. The most significant threat to the United States, the report concludes, comes from terrorist groups operating in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan." As legitimate as the questions that have emerged in the Bowe Bergdahl case may be, they are secondary to the deteriorating situation associated with the war the recently released prisoner went to Afghanistan to fight. There is no denying that the contempt for Congress shown in failing to inform it of the deal even as perhaps 100 in the administration knew of it starkly reveals the cynicism behind last years faux deferral to Congress on Syria. But it would be far more cynical to continue with the Obama teams variation on the "mission accomplished" misrepresentations of his predecessor. The war in Iraq was not over or won when we said it was. Nor is the war on terror won or the threat it poses resolved simply by no longer using the term or suggesting our goal was merely to inflict damage on the tiny fraction of terrorists who were associated with the 9/11 attacks. The reality is that we are still fighting the last war on terror even as a new set of risks loom and are made worse by our minimizing their implications for political purposes. In its recent assessment, "Country Reports on Terrorism 2013," the State Department acknowledged the trend. It observes that last year attacks worldwide increased almost by half, from 6,700 to 9,700. Nearly 18,000 people died and nearly 33,000 were injured. While the report hails allied forces for making progress combating al Qaedas core in the AfPak region, it also notes that the groups affiliates are becoming more dangerous. The report takes particular note of the threat posed by foreign extremists in Syria, which has become a kind of petri dish in which a growing global terror threat is being cultivated. Estimates on the number of such fighters range from 7,000 to over 20,000. The news that one recent suicide bomber in Syria was an American and that one of the attackers behind the recent shooting at the Jewish Museum of Belgium spent time in Syria suggests how this threat may evolve over time. Its not unlikely that, if left unchecked, the long-term consequences of a cadre of fighters trained in Syria who will soon return to their home countries will be one of the darkest legacies of that war a legacy that may well echo the long-term costs associated with training jihadists in the battle against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s, among whom, of course, was Osama bin Laden.Turn: mass surveillance damages national standing which is key to stop terrorismRothkopf 2014 (David Rothkopf is CEO and Editor of the Foreign Policy Group, 6-10-2014, "We Are Losing the War on Terror," Foreign Policy, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/10/we-are-losing-the-war-on-terror/)In the wake of the 9/11 attacks we had a number of reactions to the trauma it caused. Some were natural like seeking to exact a punishment on those behind the attacks. Some were sound national security policy like seeking to keep the attackers from ever attacking us again, and increasing the tools we have to anticipate or mitigate future risks. Some were dangerously ill-considered like invading Iraq. Some were damaging to our national standing like surveillance overreach or the use of torture. Today, we are learning the lessons of this period of reaction, this era in which so many of our initiatives seemed to be driven by fear of a future attack. That is why it would be both ironic and perilous for us to fail to learn one of the first lessons of what happened on 9/11, which is that in todays globalized, technologically empowered world, there is no such thing as a distant problem. All can make their way to our doorstep with lightning speed. This does not mean we must intervene everywhere against everyone. The first War on Terror was clearly mismanaged in many sometimes profoundly damaging ways. Indeed, some of our best antidotes to the risk posed by terror are not war at all but good intelligence, good police work, and a renewed focus on economic, social, and institutional development. Certainly, invading and destabilizing extraneous countries only makes matters worse. One of the most pervasive problems behind the first War on Terror was national narcissism the sense that now that this problem that had afflicted so many for so long had taken a big enough toll on us, it was all about us, entirely up to us to handle in whatever way we saw fit, the laws of nations and the international community be damned. But there is another insidious consequence of such nationalism. It is the mistaken belief the one that afflicted us prior to 9/11 and was one of its proximate causes that if such problems did not impact our shores and our people, they never would; they werent our concern. We cant let such a view delude us into complacency now. As Seth Jones, the author of the Rand report, has said, "Based on these threats, the United States cannot afford to withdraw or remain disengaged from key parts of North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. After more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it may be tempting for the U.S. to turn its attention elsewhere and scale back on counterterrorism efforts. But [our] research indicates that the struggle is far from over." We dare not drop our guard. And we must find ways to work even more vigorously with the international community, with our allies, with stable regional governments upon which we can depend and with whom we can collaborate, to do whatever we can to reverse this disturbing recent trend. President Barack Obamas West Point speech which suggested that we could now safely start to hand off such issues to partners on the ground has, in the case of Pakistan and Iraq, been debunked within the last few days. We cannot put this effort on autopilot and forget about it. Instead we must develop new strategies and new active and committed alliances like finding ways to work more closely with the Chinese, who face a similar threat at home, reinvigorating how the Atlantic Alliance works together on such issues, and working more closely with the more moderate Sunni states in the Middle East. Our new efforts will require more aid (and unlike with some of our Syria promises, aid that is swiftly delivered when it can make a difference). They will mean more technical assistance and training. More shared intelligence. More military support and, yes, action when it is the only and best available option. And above all it will mean instilling the sense of urgency that should be associated with any endeavor, like this one to protect our citizens and interests, in which we are so clearly losing ground. Bioterrorism DefenseFrontlinePublic health surveillance, rather than mass surveillance, is key to prevent a bioterror attack-Public health surveillance is key-Global attack rather than domestic more likely -Lack of public health surveillance capabilities means bioterror attack inevitableKman & Bachmann 2011 (Nicholas E. Kman of the Department of Emergency Medicine, The Ohio State University Medical Center, and Daniel J. Bachmann, Emergency Medicine, The Ohio State University Medical Center, 30 April 2011, Hindawi Publishing, http://www.hindawi.com/journals/apm/2012/301408/) ABDespite the massive increase in funding and resources that has catapulted our capability for increased biosurveillance over the past decade, both in the US and abroad, there remain several challenges that must be addressed. The value of disease surveillance systems to public health officials is greatest when several systems are used together. The primary limitation of disease surveillance at this point is the limited coordination and lack of interoperability among the various private and federal surveillance systems. As part of the 9/11 Commission Act, the National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) was created within the Department of Homeland Security to integrate information and support an interagency biosurveillance community. A 2009 report from the US Government Accountability Office on the state of biosurveillance and resource use concluded that there exists confusion, uncertainty, and skepticism around the value of the interagency community, as well as the mission and purpose of the NBIC within that community. Furthermore, there was a lack of clarity about roles, responsibilities, joint strategies, policies, and procedures for operating across agency borders [33]. Each individual system provides useful information, though no single system is complete [5]. Since it is possible to travel to most places in the world in less time than the incubation period for many infectious diseases, our networks must be expanded to allow for global surveillance [9]. The World Health Organization produced a major overhaul of their International Health Regulations in 2005 with a specific focus on the coordination of the global public health response to natural disasters, accidental release, or deliberate use of biological and chemical agents that can affect global public health [3]. But this cooperation must exist at every levellocal, state, federal, and internationalto maximize the effects of surveillance. Another challenge of our current surveillance approach is the consequences of false-positive activation. These systems must be designed for high sensitivity given the overlap of commonplace pathogens with potential bioterror agents. Unfortunately, this may often sacrifice the specificity of the systems. The false alarms may be due to technical malfunctions or to naturally occurring events, such as the detection of anthrax in areas with large concentrations of cattle [32]. The subsequent mobilization of significant resources is not only costly but can be very distracting and generate overwhelming public distress. The acquisition of data to fuel a surveillance system, especially the syndromic and clinical-based ones, may be challenged by concerns for privacy of protected health information (PHI). Though the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule allows for essential exchanges of health data during a public health emergency, the flow of PHI may be slowed by misunderstandings of the Privacy Rules accounting requirement. This obstacle regarding HIPAA exceptions requires education of the necessary parties prior to the event of a bioterrorist attack [34].Bioterrorism using synthetic biology is impossible4 reasons1) The complexity of synthetic biology is understatedtheir evidence is media hype and scientific misunderstandingJefferson, Lentzos, & Marris 2014 (Catherine Jefferson Filippa Lentzos , and Claire Marris of the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine, Kings College London, August 21st, 2014, Synthetic Biology and Biosecurity: Challenging the Myths, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4139924/) ABMyth 1 Synthetic biology is de-skilling biology and making it easier for terrorists to exploit advances in the biosciences Founding leaders in synthetic biology have argued that developments in the field would lead to a situation where biology would not only become easier to engineer, but that it would become easier for anyone to engineer biology. For example, during his early campaigns to garner political and financial support for the field, Drew Endy stressed that synthetic biology would lead to the probable inability to control the distribution of technologies needed to manipulate biological systems (12). Rob Carlson, in an article published in a biosecurity journal, emphasized that it would lead to the inevitable proliferation of skills [(13), p. 7]. Endy and Carlson both pointed to potential dual-use threats, whereby the powerful technology that they were promoting could be misapplied for harmful purposes. George Church also raised these issues in his Synthetic Biohazard Non-proliferation Proposal (14). The JCVI funded a report on Options for Governance that also focused almost exclusively on such risks (15). The idea that synthetic biology could make it easier for non-specialists, including those working outside of institutions, to exploit this powerful technology for both benevolent and malevolent purposes, has to a large extent become a hallmark of the field. For example, in an article entitled Diffusion of synthetic biology: a challenge to biosafety Markus Schmidt, who was the leader of the first European Commission-funded project on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues of the field (SYNBIOSAFE) and who has become a prominent commentator on the risks involved, has argued, in a paper that has been cited 52 times in Google Scholar (accessed 10th July 2014), that: With this de-skilling agenda, synthetic biology might finally unleash the full potential of biotechnology and spark a wave of innovation, as more and more people have the necessary skills to engineer biology [(16), p. 1]. This portrayal of synthetic biology focuses on the powerful positive impact that could be unleashed by de-skilling, and inevitably leads to concerns that such power could fall into the hands of people with malevolent intentions. As a result, policy experts have routinely expressed concerns that synthetic biology could be used by terrorists to produce biological weapons. For example, political scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Gautam Mukunda2 and Kenneth Oye), who were both at the time working for the US Synthetic Biology Research Center (Synberc), published an article on synthetic biology and biosecurity in 2009, in which they stated: Synthetic biology includes, as a principal part of its agenda, a sustained, well-funded assault on the necessity of tacit knowledge in bioengineering and thus on one of the most important current barriers to the production of biological weapons [(17), p. 14]. The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies to the European Commission also emphasized this in their 2009 Opinion on synthetic biology: Ethical issues arise particularly from dangers of using synthetic lethal and virulent pathogens for terrorist attacks, bio-war, or maleficent uses (garage terrorism, bio-hacking), particularly if knowledge and skills on how to produce such pathogens are freely available [(18), p. 43]. Challenges to Myth 1 These concerns are based on the assumption that synthetic biology already has made it, or shortly will make it, easy for anybody to engineer biology. The underlying vision is one where well-characterized biological parts can be easily obtained from open-source online registries and then easily assembled, by people with no specialist training and working outside professional scientific institutions, into genetic circuits, devices, and systems that will reliably perform desired functions in live organisms (1, 2). However, this does not even reflect current realities in academic or commercial science laboratories, where researchers are still struggling with every stage of this process (19, 20). Moreover, synthetic biologists who participated in our recent workshop (11) argued that although historical experience with other forms of (non-biological) engineering demonstrate that dependence on the craft skills of a small number of highly trained individuals is reduced for some parts of the production process, usually by standardization and mechanization, this does not mean that skills become irrelevant or that all aspects of the work become easier. Specialized expertise, teamwork, large infrastructures, complicated machinery, advanced technology, trouble-shooting, and organizational factors continue to be required when a design and engineering approach develops. Thus, even though the engineering approach of synthetic biology aims to make processes more systematic and more reproducible, this will not make it easier for anybody to engineer biology. Indeed, some aspects of the work may become more complex, and new skills may be required. A useful analogy to aeronautical engineering was used at the workshop to illustrate this. Planes are built from a large number of well-characterized parts in a systematic way, but this does not mean that any member of the general public can build a plane, make it fly, and use it for commercial transportation. Thus, it is too simplistic to suggest that if synthetic biology becomes an engineering discipline it will necessarily become easier for anybody to engineer biological systems, including dangerous ones. More care needs to be taken in the interpretation of statements about how synthetic biology will lead to de-skilling and make the engineering of biology easier. 2) There are no dangers in garage biologythe research is simplistic and strict standards are still adhered toJefferson, Lentzos, & Marris 2014 (Catherine Jefferson Filippa Lentzos , and Claire Marris of the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine, Kings College London, August 21st, 2014, Synthetic Biology and Biosecurity: Challenging the Myths, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4139924/) ABMyth 2 Synthetic biology has led to the growth of a DIY biology community, which could offer dual-use knowledge, tools, and equipment for bioterrorists seeking to do harm Developments in synthetic biology are seen to be closely associated with the growth of the DIYbio community, and concerns are expressed that this could offer knowledge, tools, and equipment to bioterrorists seeking to do harm. This was a key thrust in Carlsons 2003 article, which started with the phrase: The advent of the home molecular laboratory is not far off. Schmidt also stressed this notion in his 2008 article, saying, for example: [Imagine] a world where practically anybody with an average IQ would have the ability to create novel organisms in their home garage [(16), p. 2]. This anticipated rise of a form of biology that could be performed by amateurs in their home garage or kitchen (25), sometimes referred to as biohacking, was understandably picked up by biosecurity experts. Jonathan Tucker, a well-recognized expert on chemical and biological weapons, wrote several articles on this topic, and in the most widely cited of these (cited 96 times according to Google Scholar, accessed 07/07/2014), he said: The reagents and tools used in synthetic biology will eventually be converted into commercial kits, making it easier for biohackers to acquire them. Moreover, as synthetic biology training becomes increasingly available to students at the college and possibly high-school levels, a hacker culture may emerge, increasing the risk of reckless or malevolent experimentation [(26), p. 42]. Such concerns became prevalent at the NSABB, an organization established in 2005 to provide advice to the US government on biosecurity issues: As synthetic biology techniques become easier and less expensive and the applications become more widely relevant, the range of practitioners expands to include scientists from a variety of disciplines; students at all levels, including high school; and amateur scientists and hobbyists who may lack any formal affiliations with universities or research institutions. The diversity of practitioners will also include individuals of different ages and varied social and educational backgrounds who may not have been sensitized to the ethical social and legal norms of the traditional life science research communities [(27), p. 11]. By 2014, this idea had become so widely accepted among experts in the field of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) weapons that an article entitled DIY Bioterrorism Part II: the proliferation of bioterrorism through synthetic biology was posted on the CBRNePortal.com. This article stated that: The threat may be changing with the continued advancement of synthetic biology applications. Coupled with the ease of information sharing and a rapidly growing do-it-yourself-biology (DIYbio) movement, the chances of not only more attacks but potentially more deadly ones will inevitably increase (28). Challenges to Myth 2 The link between synthetic biology and DIYbio, and the level of sophistication of the experiments typically being performed in DIYbio community labs, is overstated (24, 29). Members of DIYbio communities who are involved in more sophisticated experiments tend to be trained biologists, not amateurs and, as noted in the previous section, the experiences of amateur members of the DIYbio community demonstrate the challenges posed by tacit knowledge to successfully conduct even rudimentary biological experiments. Furthermore, members of the DIYbio community tend to be proactive in addressing and engaging with safety and security concerns and many community labs have strict rules about access (24). For example, BioCurious, a community lab in silicon Valley, requires all members working in the wet lab to undertake a safety orientation, regardless of formal education or previous laboratory experience. BioCurious also has a safety committee that reviews requests to work with organisms not already on an approved list, and can approve, modify, or reject experimental design4. DIYbio.org has also been active in promoting responsibility within the community. For example, in partnership with the Synthetic Biology Project at the Wilson Center, DIYbio.org has developed a Draft Code of Ethics that includes a focus on transparency, safety, and peaceful purpose5. In January 2013, DIYbio.org also launched an Ask a Biosafety Officer web portal6 in which anyone with a question can submit their query to a panel of volunteer biosafety experts. DIYbio Europe has established a set of Community Lab Safety Guidelines, with an emphasis on communication, openness, lab organization, and user and environmental safety (30). The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) weapons of mass destruction outreach program has also launched a series of efforts to promote outreach and oversight of the DIYbio community (31).3) Bioterrorists cant synthesize the DNA to engineer a virusfive reasonsJefferson, Lentzos, & Marris 2014 (Catherine Jefferson Filippa Lentzos , and Claire Marris of the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine, Kings College London, August 21st, 2014, Synthetic Biology and Biosecurity: Challenging the Myths, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4139924/) ABMyth 3 DNA synthesis has become cheaper and can be out-sourced, and this will make it easier for terrorists to create biological threat agents DNA synthesis is one of the key enabling technologies of synthetic biology. There are now a number of commercial companies that provide DNA synthesis services, so the process can be out-sourced: a client can order a DNA sequence online and receive the synthesized DNA material by post within days or weeks. The price charged by these companies has greatly reduced over the last 20years, and is now around 0.3 US$ per base pair, which puts it within reach of a broad range of actors. This has led to routine statements suggesting that it is now cheap and easy to obtain a synthesized version of any desired DNA sequence. This popularized image of DNA synthesis is well represented by the Wikipedia entry (accessed 02/07/2014) for artificial gene synthesis, which states that: it is possible to make a completely synthetic double-stranded DNA molecule with no apparent limits on either nucleotide sequence or size. Rob Carlson first published his now famous Carlson curves, illustrating the increasing productivity and reducing cost of DNA synthesis, in an article in the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, which focused on how to combat the potential for mischief or mistake associated with advances in biological technologies (13). This illustrates how synthetic biology was, early on, promoted alongside discussions of a related biosecurity threat. The key concern raised has been that bioterrorists could create dangerous viruses or other pathogens from scratch, meaning without access to the biological material from nature, from a strain repository, or from a laboratory. Instead, they would start with DNA or RNA genomic sequences for pathogenic viruses and bacterial pathogens that are increasingly freely available online. Such fears were heightened in 2002 by an experiment in which poliovirus was synthesized without the use of any natural virus or viral components (32). The research team, led by Eckard Wimmer, obtained published poliovirus RNA genome sequence information and converted this into DNA sequence data, which they then ordered from a commercial DNA synthesis company and assembled into a viral genome. The DNA was converted back into RNA and the RNA was used to produce a functional virus. Publication of this research in a scientific journal article immediately raised concerns that terrorists could use it as a recipe to synthesize dangerous viruses without needing access to biological material. These fears were further fueled when a journalist from The Guardian reported that he had been able to order online a synthesized DNA fragment from the smallpox virus genome and have it delivered to a residential address. According to this journalist, this showed the ease with which terrorist organizations could obtain the basic ingredients of biological weapons (33). As Garfinkel et al. [(15), pp. 56) point out, although these experiments built upon previous work on DNA synthesis, Wimmers work demonstrated for the first time in a post-September 11 world the feasibility of synthesizing a complete microorganism, in this case, a human pathogen using only published DNA sequence information and mail-ordered raw materials. Such concerns were further crystallized when, the following year, researchers at the JCVI similarly synthesized the bacteriophage phiX174 (a virus that infects bacteria) (34), and when researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reconstructed the Spanish flu virus (35), thought to have killed around 50 million people during the 1918 pandemic (36). This demonstrated that even viruses that could not otherwise be easily obtained in nature or from laboratory collections could be recreated (by well-resourced university researchers). Together, the reconstruction of poliovirus and Spanish influenza virus have come to epitomize the threat narrative that DNA synthesis has become faster and cheaper, and that this will make it easier for terrorists to create biological threat agents. This is illustrated by statements from biosecurity experts such as Jonathan Tucker and Raymond Zilinskas7: One potential misuse of synthetic biology would be to recreate known pathogens (such as the Ebola virus) in the laboratory as a means of circumventing the legal and physical controls on access to select agents that pose a bioterrorism risk. Indeed, the feasibility of assembling an entire, infectious viral genome from a set of synthetic oligonucleotides has already been demonstrated for poliovirus and the Spanish influenza virus [(26), p. 37]. Another article published in 2007 by Stephen Maurer and Laurie Zoloth stated that8: Synthetic biologists have already shown how terrorists could obtain life forms that now exist only in carefully guarded facilities, such as polio and 1918 influenza samples [(37), p. 16]. In an early article highlighting this concern, security analysts from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies wrote: An editorial in a prestigious scientific journal reporting on the successful decoding and manipulation of the genetic sequence of the influenza A virus noted that one can only speculate as to how quickly our knowledge.will progress, now that every nucleotide of the viral genome can be mutated and engineered back into the genome, in nearly endless combinations with other mutations. [] Using such technologies, which have been utilized to investigate Ebola, pandemic flu, influenza, hanta viruses, lassa, rabies, and Marburg viruses, there is no need for a bioweaponeer to isolate the virus from an infected patient, acquire it from a germ bank, or culture it from nature. All the required starting materials, such as cell lines and DNA synthesizers, are widely available and used for many beneficent purposes. And the sequences for a growing variety of viruses that infect humans, animals and plants, including Ebola, pandemic influenza, and smallpox, are published in the open literature [(38), p. 30]. Tara OToole, Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies and co-author of the article, was also the principal author of Operation Dark Winter (in 2001-2002) and Atlantic Storm (2005), the disaster response exercises that simulated covert outbreaks of smallpox in the United States. She went on to become Under Secretary of the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security and, on the 10-year anniversary of the anthrax letters, reiterated her Johns Hopkins groups earlier concerns with synthetic biology in testimony to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: More than a decade ago, the Defense Science Board affirmed that, there are no technical barriers to a large-scale bioattack. We are living in the midst of a biotechnology revolution where the knowledge and tools needed to acquire and disseminate a biological weapon are increasingly accessible. It is possible today to manipulate pathogens characteristics (e.g., virulence, antibiotic resistance), and even to synthesize viruses from scratch. These procedures will inexorably become simpler and more available across the globe as technology continues to mature (39). Concerns about terrorist use of DNA synthesis to create biological weapons spread internationally, and synthetic biology has become a regular feature of the science and technology reviews of the international treaty banning biological weapons: the BWC. In one of these reviews for BWC members, the Chinese delegation noted that: With the spread of synthetic biology, some small scale research groups and even some individuals are now able to make the deadly Ebola and smallpox viruses and even some viruses against which all drugs are ineffective, thus making it much harder to counter bioterrorism. Furthermore, it has become much easier to obtain sensitive information. Using publicly available DNA sequences, terrorists can quickly synthesize pathogenic microbes that had previously been eradicated. [(40), p. 4]. During a 2012 Meeting of Experts of the BWC, the US delegation noted that: These technologies [enabling technologies, including high-throughput systems for sequencing, synthesizing and analyzing DNA; bioinformatics and computational tools; and systems biology] could potentially be used for purposes contrary to the Convention, including making pathogens or toxins easier and less expensive to manufacture de novo, and further into the future, enabling development of biological weapons agents designed to evade countermeasures or target certain human populations [(41), p. 1-2]. Similar concerns have also been highlighted by individual bioweapons experts. Recent examples include Laurie Garretts9 article in the November/December 2013 issue of Foreign Affairs (42), which was widely disseminated and became the subject of a Foreign Affairs Focus video interview with the author published online on 15th January 201410. In this article Garrett asserts that: All the key barriers to the artificial synthesis of viruses and bacteria have been overcome, at least on a proof-of-principle basis (42). Another example is the article written by Adam Bernier and Patrick Rose for the CBRNePortal, which states: Non-state actors who wish to employ biological agents for ill intent are sure to be aware of how tangible bio-weapons are becoming as applications of synthetic biology become more affordable and the probability of success increases with each scientific breakthrough (28). Synthetic biologists have not sought to deny these risks, and have led several initiatives to consider how these potential biosecurity risks could best be addressed. These initiatives re-enforced the association between synthetic biology, DNA synthesis, and biosecurity threats. For example in his Synthetic Biohazard Non-proliferation Proposal, George Church stated: While the likelihood of misuse of oligos to gain access to nearly extinct human viruses (e.g. polio) or novel pathogens (like IL-4-poxvirus) is small, the consequences loom larger than chemical and nuclear weapons, since biohazards are inexpensive, can spread rapidly world-wide and evolve on their own (14). Similarly, the JCVI report mentioned above concluded that: today, any synthesis of viruses, even very small or relatively simple viruses, remains relatively difficult. In the near future, however, the risk of nefarious use will rise because of the increasing speed and capability of the technology and its widening accessibility. [] Ten years from now, it may be easier to synthesize almost any pathogenic virus than to obtain it through other means [(15), p. 1213]. And a group of synthetic biologists (including Drew Endy and George Church) published, together with leading DNA synthesis companies and four FBI staff, a commentary in Nature Biotechnology on DNA synthesis and biological security, which stated that: Like any powerful technology, DNA synthesis has the potential to be purposefully misapplied. Misuse of DNA-synthesis technology could give rise to both known and unforeseeable threats to our biological safety and security [(43), p. 627]. Challenges to Myth 3 When speaking about DNA synthesis, it is useful to distinguish between (a) the synthesis of oligonucleotides, commonly referred to as oligos, which are typically less than 100 nucleotides in length; (b) gene synthesis, a term used to refer to the de novo synthesis ofgene-length DNA sequences, typically 2003,000 base pairs (bp); and (c) the assembly of de novo synthesized gene-length fragments into genetic circuits and whole genomes. There are a number of ways in which DNA synthesis could be used to create a synthetic viral genome [(44), p. 134]. An entire viral genome could be ordered online from a commercial gene synthesis company. Short, single stranded oligonucleotides could also be ordered from different gene synthesis companies and stitched together to create a complete viral genome. Alternatively, oligonucleotides could be synthesized using a purchased or custom-built DNA synthesizer, and these fragments could then be assembled into a complete viral genome. Several challenges should be taken into account when assessing the potential for this technology to be misused. Ordering short oligos and then assembling them into a genome was the method used in the polio and Spanish flu experiments, but this required specialist expertise, experience, and equipment, which were all available in the academic laboratories involved but would not be easily accessible to an amateur working from home. Obtaining the oligos (as was done by The Guardian journalist for the smallpox virus) is only the first step in a complicated process. This is the first challenge to Myth 3. The second challenge to Myth 3 is that, contrary to what is stated in Wikipedia, and what is often implied in the policy discourse described above, even specialized DNA synthesis companies cannot easily synthesize de novo any desired DNA sequence. Several commercial companies provide routine gene synthesis services for sequences under 3,000bp, but length is a crucial factor, the process is error prone, and some sequences are recalcitrant to chemical synthesis (those that are complex, have high GC content, or result in the expression of particular proteins when cloned). Thus, in a recent review of large-scale de novo DNA synthesis, Kosuri and Church conclude that: Today, reconstructions of complete viral and bacterial genomes are testaments of how far our synthetic capabilities have come. Despite the improvements, our ability to read DNA is better than our ability to write it [(45), p. 499]. The polio and phi174 viruses both have relatively small genomes, but these are still 7,400 and 5,400bp, respectively. Thus, several de novo synthesized DNA fragments would have to be assembled in order to produce a full genome and (even if this was not already regulated by voluntary guidelines adopted by DNA synthesis companies) it would not be possible to simply order the full-length genome sequence of a small virus online. The third challenge is that for sequences longer than 510kb, assembly of DNA fragments becomes the crucial step, not de novo DNA synthesis. This was the major technological feat in the work conducted at the JCVI that produced the synthetic bacterial genome, and the Gibson Assembly method developed for that project is now widely used. The description of that work, however, demonstrates how the assembly of smaller fragments into larger ones and eventually into a functioning genome required substantial levels of expertise and resources, including those needed to conduct trouble-shooting experiments to identify and correct errors when assembled DNA constructs did not perform as expected (46). The fourth challenge to Myth 3 relates to cost. The price of gene synthesis has declined greatly over the last 20years, and the policy discourse that underlies biosecurity fears often implies that it will naturally become even cheaper over time, and thus widely affordable. The decline in price has, however, more or less stagnated around 0.3 US$ per base pair since 2008; and Carlson (47), Kosuri and Church (45), and Shetty (48) each discuss reasons why investment in this area may not be sufficient or well directed enough to generate further significant advances. The fifth and fundamental challenge to Myth 3 is that constructing a genome size DNA fragment is not the same as creating a functional genome. In particular, ensuring the desired expression of viral proteins is a complex challenge, which has been well documented in Vogels (5) account of the 2002 poliovirus synthesis experiment. Drawing on interviews with the researchers involved in the experiment, Vogel found that making HeLa cell-free extracts was a crucial step in translating the synthetic genome into infectious virus particles; and it was also one of the most difficult parts of the experiment. Successful preparation of the HeLa cell-free extracts depended on craft-like techniques that require specialized and localized know-how. Yet, as Vogel notes, despite the difficulties encountered in this step of the process, published protocols of the experiment give no indication of this contingency:4) Bioterrorists arent trying to kill everyoneand even if they were, releasing the virus that kills the human race isnt feasibleJefferson, Lentzos, & Marris 2014 (Catherine Jefferson Filippa Lentzos , and Claire Marris of the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine, Kings College London, August 21st, 2014, Synthetic Biology and Biosecurity: Challenging the Myths, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4139924/)