In the following round, we observe that the benefits of a government program depends

on the success of its intended objectives. Without fulfilling those objectives, any extra
benefits gained from activities that do not pertain to national security cannot be weighed
in this round. Moreover, when domestic surveillance programs attempt to justify
themselves through other benefits, they open up an avenue of greater systemic harm to
our society. Thus, we negate this months resolution.
Contention 1: Domestic surveillance by the NSA is ineffective.
Subpoint A: Terrorists are already aware of the extent of the domestic surveillance
programs. Richard Clarke, the top counter-terrorism czar under President Clinton and
Bush states that terrorists already assume that this sort of thing is being done. Leonid
Bershidsky writing for Bloomberg notes that the infrastructure built by the NSA may only
be good for gathering information, and I quote, on the stupidest, lowest ranking
terrorists. NSAs PRISM surveillance program targets services that truly dangerous
elements do not use. Moreover, former NSA communications expert William Binney
points out that the NSA collects so much information that it lacks the proper analysis to
carry out effective surveillance on legitimate threat.
Supboint B: Domestic surveillance has not prevented a single dangerous terrorist attack
in the U.S. Proponents of the NSAs domestic surveillance argue that the program has
resulted in 54 cases that resulted in the prevention of terrorist attacks. However, these
so called preventions lacked evidence or were tangentially relevant in terrorist plots.
According to Senator Patrick Leahy, there is no evidence that bulk phone records
collected by the NSA helped to thwart these terrorist attacks. In a senate judiciary
committee hearing, General Keith Alexander of the NSA admitted that only 13 out of the
54 had a connection to the United States. Of the 13, only one or perhaps two resulted in
foiling terrorist plots. The first one includes an indictment of Basaaly Moalin, a taxi cab
driver, for donating $8,500 to what he believed was to finance a school. The second
incident relates to the Times Square Bomber. Although the bomber was foiled, the
Guardian observes that the Times Square Bomber was not detected by the NSA but by
the conventional surveillance technique of tip-offs provided by the INTELLIGENCE
SURVEILLANCE in BRITAIN. Finally, the Boston Bombers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan
Tsarnaev, and the Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Hasan, completely escaped the detection of
the NSA. .
Contention 2: The NSAs domestic surveillance program is used to monitor American
citizens, a mission creep that expands beyond its original goals. The extent of its
activities are as follows. Jennifer Granick, writing for Forbes, reports that the NSA
routinely shares intercepted information with the DEA and the IRS, urging these
departments to routinely lie about their collaboration. The NY Times reports that the
NSAs collaborated with the Department of State and Energy, Department of Security and
Commerce, and the United States Trade Representatives. The Wall Street Journal reports
that the NSA officers used the surveillance powers to spy on their love interests. Called
LOVEINT violations, NSA officers spied on their spouses or love interests. The
consequences of the NSAs domestic surveillance program, bleeding into activities
beyond the purview of domestic security, are harmful because we simply cannot predict
their outcomes. Although the impacts of mission creep are unclear because of the
nascent and unprecedented nature of the program, its use are clearly outside the scope
of its original intent, opening up numerous avenues for potential abuses by those in
power.
Contention 3: Domestic surveillance harms the economy.

Subpoint A: Fears over the National Security Agencys Prism spy project could cost
cloud, hosting and outsourcing providers $180 billion in lost business. According to
Forrester Research, Mr. Staten said that in addition to the $35 billion estimated, vendors
of hosting and outsourcing services which offer many of the same services as cloud
companies, but use different processes and revenue models could suffer an additional
$100 billion in lost business. Moreover, non-U.S. cloud service providers could lose $35
billion worth of business from international customers, as awareness grows of the
surveillance activities of other governments.
Subpoint B: NSA surveillance threatens trade relationship with the European Union. The
successful adoption of the EU-US trade agreement promises both parties massive gains
of up to $159 billion. However, the deal faced threat after media reports that the US
National Security Agency (NSA) spied German leader Angela Merkel's mobile calls. The
German government said it had obtained information that US agencies may have hacked
German chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone. Following the leaking of top-secret
documents by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Merkel sought an explanation from US
President Barack Obama for what Germany said was a "serious breach of trust" between
the allies.