Diane Feinstein claims the NSA's data collection (spying) of Americans is 'not surveillance'

Diane Feinstein defends NSA data collection and insists program is 'not surveillance'

Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the US Senate committee charged with holding the intelligence establishment to account, declared on Monday that the National Security Agency's mass collection of phone records is "not surveillance" and should be maintained as an essential tool to combat terrorism.

"The call-records program is not surveillance. It does not collect the content of any communication, nor do the records include names or locations," Feinstein wrote. "The NSA only collects the type of information found on a telephone bill: phone numbers of calls placed and received, the time of the calls and duration."

Several experts independent of the intelligence committee have testified, including to Feinstein's committee, that the collection of phone metadata can provide a detailed and intrusive window into an individual's life, particularly when matched with other data. A person's name, for instance, can easily be derived from their telephone number.

However, Feinstein said that it was necessary for the agency to obtain "the haystack" of phone records in order to find the terrorist "needle".

"To be effective, the NSA must be able to conduct these queries quickly, without regard to which phone carrier a terrorist or conspirator uses," she said. "And the records must be available for a few years – longer than phone companies need them for billing purposes."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/21/dianne-feinstein-defends-nsa-data-collection

The U.S. war on terror has increased terrorism:

In the name of fighting our enemies – the U.S. has directly been supporting Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups for the last decade. See this, this, this, this and this.

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) Global Terrorism Database – part of a joint government-university program on terrorism -  is hosted at the University of Maryland.

START is the most comprehensive open source terrorism database, which can be viewed by journalists and civilians lacking national security clearance.

A quick review of charts from the START database show that terrorism has increased in the last 9 years since the U.S. started its “war on terror”.

Security experts – including both conservatives and liberals – agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

Killing innocent civilians is one of the main things which increases terrorism. As one of the top counter-terrorism experts (the former number 2 counter-terrorism expert at the State Department) told me, starting wars against states which do not pose an imminent threat to America’s national security increases the threat of terrorism because:

One of the principal causes of terrorism is injuries to people and families.

The Iraq war wasn’t even fought to combat terrorism. And Al Qaeda wasn’t even in Iraq until the U.S. invaded that country.

And top CIA officers say that drone strikes increase terrorism (and see this).

James K. Feldman – former professor of decision analysis and economics at the Air Force Institute of Technology and the School of Advanced Airpower Studies – and other experts say that foreign occupation is the main cause of terrorism University of Chicago professor Robert A. Pape – who specializes in international security affairs – points out:

Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn’t to blame — the root of the problem is foreign military occupations.

Each month, there are more suicide terrorists trying to kill Americans and their allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Muslim countries than in all the years before 2001 combined.

More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research [co-authored by James K. Feldman - former professor of decision analysis and economics at the Air Force Institute of Technology and the School of Advanced Airpower Studies] that we conducted at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism, where we examined every one of the over 2,200 suicide attacks across the world from 1980 to the present day.

As the United States has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, which have a combined population of about 60 million, total suicide attacks worldwide have risen dramatically — from about 300 from 1980 to 2003, to 1,800 from 2004 to 2009.

Over 90 percent of suicide attacks worldwide are now anti-American. The vast majority of suicide terrorists hail from the local region threatened by foreign troops, which is why 90 percent of suicide attackers in Afghanistan are Afghans.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/u-s-war-on-terror-has-increased-terrorism.html