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there is an obvious use for it in helping stop attacks

It's not that obvious to me. Can you explain why you think this is obvious? Because in order to stop attacks, you need specific, actionable intelligence. Indiscriminate collection of data just muddies the water.

I was going to do a simple calculation here, but wikipedia already has a nice illustration from Cory Doctorow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox#Discuss...



Sure - as mentioned in my previous comment it gives you an entire history of communication to retroactively analyze.

It's not likely to reveal much alone (too much noise - like you suggested), but given a lead from some other means you can use it as a tool to look through the recent communications of that suspect and their close network.

This would be a tool that would be useful to have and since people planning violence are likely communicating about plans - looking at comms could lead to actionable intelligence.

Is this potential intel worth the risk of abuse? I think probably not, but that should probably be decided by the society being surveilled. Either way it definitely should not be done in secret.

I worry that trying to argue surveillance is entirely useless will do more harm overall because to those 'in favor' of surveillance it's a dumb position.




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