The Wall Street Journal has an article detailing how the Paris attackers operated out in the open, using their own names, credit cards and drivers licenses. Even more absurd the leader was interviewed for a Terrorist of the Month profile piece in ISIS's english language magazine bragging that he had stockpiled weapons in preparation for an attack.
Combined with the evidence that they communicated over unencrypted SMS the evidence is pretty damning that the surveillance state is in the hands of the Keystone Kops.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:58PM
Yeah, you're right. I'm oversimplifying too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:32AM
You are probably undersimplifying. My bet is they do something like "p less than 0.05 that person fits the terrorist profile" and record a "discovery" in a report. If they don't do this at the expected rate, the next guy will do it and seem more productive. So that guy gets the promotion or whatever. Then you have a giant database of misleading information that gets generated. The same nonsense that has been ruining other areas of research is probably ruining this.