If you can't beat the NSA then you accept you can't beat any foreign governments spy agencies, right? That's part of the premise of the original article, that you can't have a private conversation.
And your suggestion that mass surveillance is a reasonable solution to domestic terrorism is quiet terrifying to me. Mass surveillance is far too easy to abuse. Sure you can have a 'for the people' government and it not be abused, but a 'for the people' government needs a healthy amount of fear of the people to remain so. Your country already has issues with gerrymandering, do you think that's made better or worse by the government collecting more information about the people?
To follow your overthrow path, would more surveillance have helped? Would less have hindered? I'd say no to both accounts. The government already had information on when/what was going to occur and that was obtained not with mass surveillance but with simply in infiltrating the communities involved.
We should also consider if mass surveillance is the best solution to the issues you mentioned. Perhaps you could get the same thing you wanted by increasing education funding. Perhaps the same could be accomplished by building better cyberspace communities where you can be closer to your neighbours rather than the much more filter-bubble communities we commonly have now.
And your suggestion that mass surveillance is a reasonable solution to domestic terrorism is quiet terrifying to me. Mass surveillance is far too easy to abuse. Sure you can have a 'for the people' government and it not be abused, but a 'for the people' government needs a healthy amount of fear of the people to remain so. Your country already has issues with gerrymandering, do you think that's made better or worse by the government collecting more information about the people?
To follow your overthrow path, would more surveillance have helped? Would less have hindered? I'd say no to both accounts. The government already had information on when/what was going to occur and that was obtained not with mass surveillance but with simply in infiltrating the communities involved.
We should also consider if mass surveillance is the best solution to the issues you mentioned. Perhaps you could get the same thing you wanted by increasing education funding. Perhaps the same could be accomplished by building better cyberspace communities where you can be closer to your neighbours rather than the much more filter-bubble communities we commonly have now.