It's no coincidence the recent spate of terror alerts follows the NSA mass surveillance scandals.

[limpyhobbler]

The surveillance state is under scrutiny, the people and Congress might cut their funding.

So they are under pressure to do something, anything, that shows the money is well spent and produces useful information to stop terrorism.

The natural result of this is higher ranking officials are telling lower ranking people Hey you better find some useful stuff in all the collected data.

The "increased chatter" we've heard about on the news is entirely because they've been looking at the data more during the past few weeks.

[jakeXT]

1. Too much Monk?

[limpyhobbler]

2. Cenk got it right this time I think. Can't prove it, but seems awfully fishy.

[BobbyBoring]

3. I thought the same thing!

N/t

[libodem]

4. Of course

I'm thinking along the same lines. I can't help myself. My creative speculator has been on overdrive lately. I keep one foot grounded in reality but there's no accounting for the other one.

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. NSA is doing the "justifying it's existence" thing

.
.
.

I suspect MIHOP in the near future.

then

"we told you so!"

(sigh)

CC

[cpwm17]

6. No MIHOP type operation is required

9-11 was totally predictable. Many people who were paying attention before 9-11 knew there was a high likelihood we would be struck with a major terrorist.

Nothing's changed. Our immoral foreign policy remains. Terrorist revenge attacks are self-fulfilling prophesies.

It's all essentially a scam, even if some of the perpetrators are too stupid to know it. We bully them and they take revenge, and then we use their revenge attacks as justification to bully them even more. A few rich folks get even richer in this process, and they're too stupid to care about all of the people they have harmed.

It's no coincidence that HW Bush decided to attack Iraq just as the Cold War had ended. The right-wing needs their enemies. Many of among the American public fell for the scam.

All of that anti-science truther stuff is just a distraction from what's really going on in the world.

[ehcross]

7. NSA justifying its existence

NSA´s job is to detect threats to national security and proceed to take corresponding action to identify and transmit to operations for due action and follow-up.

[ehcross]

8. NSA must justify its existence by at least assuring America that no 9/11's will occur.

No 9/11's should occur if we make sure the NSA re-starts its capacity to monitor threats around the globe and makes sure that there are no Edward Snowdens to sniff around looking for stuff to leak to his Uncle Vladimir.